Dying tree gets new lease of life in Sircilla

HYDERABAD: Thanks to the efforts of a few nature lovers, a banyan tree that was almost dead is getting a new lease of life in Sircilla. The tree was uprooted during the last monsoon. On noticing it, Prakruti Prakash from Sircilla watered its roots every day for months. Finally, when the tree started showing signs of life, he tried to find ways to translocate it.

He approached the office of Rajya Sabha MP Santosh Kumar, who initiated the Green India Challenge, and in turn, got in touch with Hyderabad-based Vata Foundation to translocate the tree. When volunteers from the organisation examined the tree, they realised that the tree was uprooted because it was getting choked by new plants which were growing on top of it.

“When saplings started growing on top of the main tree, their roots grew into the trunk. So, the main tree’s trunk is hollow inside and top being heavy with new plants, it could not stand for long,” said co-founder of Vata Foundation Uday Krishna. Uday Krishna, during his last trip to Sircilla, found that this was the case with the tree, and decided to split the tree and the saplings into three portions and translocate all of them.

Two of the trees will be translocated in a park in Sircilla, while one will be placed at the district collector’s house. All of them will be translocated by Tuesday.