Ooty: ‘June 24’ is a date etched in the memory of naturalists of Nilgiris due to its association with the World Guinness records. Yes, on 24-6-2002, this hill district had entered the Guinness World record for planting most number of saplings on a single day. From then onwards, the near 80-acre of land at Kuruthukuli, where the record creating event was held, had come to be known as “Guinness Park”.
Sadly over the past 16 years of time, most of the 42,184 saplings that were planted during the record creating event failed to take roots as lack of interest among officials and poor maintenance are said to be the reasons behind this ‘Guinness Park’ losing its sheen over time. Now, greens are raising their voices to end the dispute over the ‘Guinness Park’ land ownership and to transfer the land to the Forest department for renewed attempts to replant the saplings to bring back shape to the ‘Guinness Park’.
Stating this Mr. S. Jayachandran, joint secretary of the ‘Tamil Nadu Green Movement’, said that apparently the land, wherein the “Guinness Park” was established, belonged to the Animal Husbandry department and it still holds the administrative control over that land.
“Trees and forests are the subject of forest department. Since, the Forest department could not exercise their ideas and plans over the ‘Guinness Park’, it is left in the lurch. The present district administration, which is showing keen interest in environmental conservation and should initiate new plan of action to transfer the ‘Guinness Park’ land to the Forest department; this will do a world of good to re-create the Guinness Park and maintain it well,” he suggested.
Echoing the same tone, V. Sivadass, managing trustee of the Nilgiris Environment and Socio-cultural Trust, said that the planting in ‘Guinness Park’ should be carried out in such a way by allotting some portions of the park to ‘National Green Crops’ and other organizations which show interest in tree planting to help them plant and maintain their portions in the park.
“By this, we can bring community involvement in re-establishing the park,” he advocated.
