A friend shared this mini collage of satellite imagery of our city earlier today. He's an animal rescuer who helped with the snake rescue at my house sometime ago and has been talking about the reduction in the greenery in and around our hometown for a while now.
Infact I've said the same for ages considering the visible difference in greenery while taking off and landing into the city. I recall those days many years ago when landing into Mangalore city seemed akin to landing in the midst of a forest. Not anymore! The deforestation seems rampant and there's no stopping it!
In less than 20 years the green cover in the city has fallen short by a great amount. The city still manages to look vibrant but the landscape has vastly changed from a small city with abundant greenery to one with just buildings everywhere.
This year rains were delayed by 2-3 weeks here, and the intensity and duration of rain fall has also reduced considerably. We had intense rains, so much that when I moved to Delhi in 2011 for a job, and my colleagues said it rains crazy in Delhi, I simply laughed at this statement.
They hadn't experienced a real heavy rainfall that lasted for weeks. Those days one of the top 5 highest rainfall zones in India was considered to be Agumbe, less than a 100 kms from my city in the Western Ghats but now I'm not so sure. I recall people saying it was the 2nd or 3rd highest in the country in my growing up years.
This year, we were facing a water shortage across the city. The ground water table has depleted vastly as in the past our well in our house was quite full even in the summer but now there wasn't a lot of water left for our consumption due to a rapid growth in the population in the surrounding areas.
Everyone wants to have multiple children in a country that's showing signs that it is lacking resources to support this kind of population explosion. I wonder sometimes why my own friends choose to have 2-4 kids. One is enough right? 2 is too much already? It's not hard to figure out how we become a population of over 1.3 billion when we look around us!
As for afforestation activities, people cannot help themselves from uprooting trees that are already present. My motorcycle club in town does some social activities a few times in the year. We planted saplings in a specific area in the past where they could've been beneficial to people overtime but we found them to be uprooted after a while. Irresponsible behaviour is rampant everywhere.
I couldn't get rid of this image from my mind since the time I saw it earlier today and it's a subject that can be discussed till the cows come home I guess!
Before I end this post I can only recall this meme. We may find it funny, but how true is this eh?
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