Subject: Anamalais - historical note (Long) 


			THE MAN WHO PLANTED TREES

by S. Theodore Bhaskaran.


'When you remembered that all this had sprung from the hands and the soul
of this one man, without technical resources, you understood that men
could be as effective as God in ohter realms than that of destruction.'

					Jean Giono

It was only recently that I read the green classic "The Man Who Planted
Trees" by the French writer, Jean Giono which was published in India in
1995 by friends of Elizabeth Bouffier, with wood engravings by Michael
McCurdy. The Story was originally published in the Vogue magazine under
the title "The Man Who Planted Hope and Grew Happiness" in 1954.

The story is about a grazier who led a life of a recluse somewhere in the
French alps. Daily as he  walked long distances with his sheep, he would
poke a hole in the ground with the sharp stick that he carried and plant a
seed. Over the years, when the slopes were covered with trees he would
shift his cottage to the next slope. Eventually, the hill ranges were
clothed with forest. Butterflies, birds, animals and brooks appeared and
the climate changed. Researchers began to study the phenomenon while the
man responsible kept moving on.

The story rang a bell. It was so reminescent of the work done by Hugo
Wood, an English Officer of the Indian Forest Service. He worked in the
Madras Presidency at the turn of the century and saved the forests of the
Anamalai Hills in the Western Ghats near Pollachi, the area now known as
the Indira Gandhi National Park.

For centuries, the Anamalai Hills were a great source of timber. Buchanan
in 1800, has left descriptions of the vast teak forests of this area and
of how troops had to cut their way through, during the Carnatic wars. A
trignometrical survey was carried out in these ranges in 1820 by two
Englishmen, Ward and Connor, who observed that the growth of teak in these
hills surpassed anything they had ever seen before. Soon, sustained and
organised deforestation began. The timber that was logged was pushed down
a slope, like a chute into the Ponnani river on the other side of the
range and was floated down to the west coast from where it was shipped to
Bombay. It was this operation that  earned the name 'Topslip' to the
place. Later, in 1889, a 11 kilometre tramway was laid from Topslip to the
foothills on the other side and the trollies were pulled over the rails by
elephants and bulls. At Pollachi, the logs were loaded on to trains.

Logging was intensified to meet the needs of the Bombay dockyard and the
rail roads that were being laid out. Outside India, in the fierce
competition between colonial powers, shipbuilding was a crucial factor and
teak was the main material required. Ramachandra Guha points out that it
was the Indian Teak which saved England during the war with Napoleon. So,
what was considered to be an inexhaustible supply of timber soon showed
signs of drying up. It was at this stage that Hugo Wood appeared on the scene.

Wood, who had caught the attention of the British government through his
work in the Ajmer-Berar forests was asked to survey in the Anamalais. His
working plan was ready by 1915. He pleaded that clear felling was to be
halted immediately, that certain areas in the Anamalais were not to be
touched at all and that some ranges needed complete protection from
felling for 25 years. And for the area to be logged, Wood suggested steps
for regeneration. Till then, when a tree was cut, teh root was also dug
out for firewood. He suggested coppicing, in which the stump and roots are
left to sprout again. He set up a saw-mill, powered by the Thoovanam
water-falls, to dress the timber logged. The Kadars, the indigenous
tribals of these hills, have a charming story to tell of this dorai.
Whenever Wood walked the hills, he would fill his trouser pockets with
teak seeds and as he moved, he would poke the ground with his walking
stick and put in a seed there.

Wood's work reached a critical moment when large tracts of forest were
getting ready for tea, cardamom and cinchona plantations. Even after the
rich sources of timber in Burma and the Andamans fell into the hands of
the Japanese in 1942, and the British army's demand for timber increased
, due to the oil shortage, the Anamalai forests were largely left alone.

The essential floral and faunal character of the moist deciduous and
evergreen forests of these ranges have been preserved. It is due to his
propitious efforts that we have inherited these forests with all the
rarities like the Lion-tailed macacque, Nilgiri Langur and Nilgiri Tahr, a
heritage as priceless as the Thanjavur temple or Carnatic music. The
cottage in which he lived, stands on top of Mount Stuart, named after a
collector of Coimbatore. Built in 1887, the ruins till recently, have been
imaginatively restored and bears the original stone tablet with the legend
"Stuart Cottage."

Hugo Wood died in 1933, at 63. In his will he had expressed a desire to be
buried in the Anamalai forest that he had nursed so tenderly and left a
small sum for the upkeep of the grave. He lies buried on a slope in one of
the blocks he helped regenerate, in front of the cottage in which he lived.
The epitaph reads _Si Monumentum Requiris Circumspice_  (` If you are
looking for a memorial, look around ').