Planting trees do make sense, but have you ever wondered; how much? Trees are expert in making environment clean and healthy. Everyone knows, it takes carbon dioxide and gives us with our basic requirement, oxygen. Our present world emits a lots and lots of carbon dioxide and other harmful Green House Gases. In order to minimize it’s effects, planting trees is very important. Our earth is home for 1.2 billion vehicles, millions of motor trains, approximate 4 billion (small and large scale) factories, thousands of mining industries, periodic nuclear tests and etc. Most importantly we have got a property of exhaling one of the greenhouse gases too. And we human beings are growing up to 8 billion. All these are key factors to emit carbon dioxide. Thereby, most of the nations are committed to stop the emission of these harmful GHGs which ultimately is resulting climate change. In fact Nepal is too making different efforts in local as well as central level. Different countries invest a big capital to plant trees in big scale in the barren area. But, what if those trees are of similar species and are invasive? Will they result well to environment? Let’s try to answer it!
Firstly, planting of trees of same kind in large scale surely degrades the quality and productivity of land. So we have to make sure that the land where we are planting trees should be barren and non- agricultural. Even planting trees in a large scale can result less availability of water in its surrounding area. The perfect example is South Africa. Some places of South Africa are suffering from scarcity of underground water which was due to planting of invasive and similar species of trees in large scale.
Secondly, similar species of trees (If woody) can invite a terrifying forest fire in dry and hot seasons. Similar tress can support big fires by their mutual conduction. It will be hard for it to get into normalcy again. It’s very hard to stop the fire as well. Best example is Amazon fire in 2020 itself.
Thirdly, planting similar species of trees can affect biodiversity. It can even extinct the existing flora and fauna of that particular area. The similar species will germinate from those trees. As a result, existing organisms may be affected due to change in their ecological region. In fact the whole ecosystem can be affected causing direct effect on human civilization. Different scientific researches too support the fact that, if one of the species of animal is extinct, the rest of the animals severely suffer from different phenomena.
Last but not the least, planting saplings of kindred category may alter the availability of different requirements of different organisms. For instance, pine trees in the Western Cape Province of South Africa have spread beyond forestry plantations and invaded native Fynbos habitat. In these invaded landscapes, the temperatures available to lizards for functioning optimally are generally cooler and the number of lizard species deducted tremendously.
But, there is always a crack for every hack. We can elucidate the problem simply by planting the local species of flora keeping diversity in mind. It will be quite supportive to support the existing number biodiversity. While doing the very job, we have to remember about the spacing. We have to maintain at least a distance of 2 meters between each and every plants. Woody plants should be mostly replaced by pulpy trees which can provide with abundant oxygen to the environment. Hence, planting tree is not only the matter, but the focus should be on maintaining it. Even if we are thinking of making Sahara Desert green, we should not forget its vital role in nourishing The Amazon forest. So, planting trees in large scale must be scientific and eco-friendly. Think before you leap!!
Rtr. Uddip Pokharel
SAP Area Coordinator
Rotaract Club of Biratnagar Downtown
