Thursday, September 25, 2008

Let us go to arboretum and see some trees...

Receding Tree Cover, Dew Drops, Ravichander Rao

This thought prompted in my mind just out of the blue. I was sitting in front of my laptop reading something on the subprime loan crisis. A picture of a row full of houses with little patch of green, popped-up this thought - the rate at which the houses are getting built and the cities are spreading, will we be seeing trees only in the arboretum in the future?

Looking at Bangalore, which used to be haven for greenery, is now in state of white mess (concrete walls) all over the place. The white space is more dominant than the green patches. If you want to believe it by seeing, check on the google earth. It is hard to find even the mud patches (not the pot-holes), where one could grow something. Furthermore, with the city still growing steadily, the situation seems to be getting out of control.


Trees moving away from the city. The dark green region is the tree and the gray is the white mess. Nagoya, Japan from Plane.
With no land to spare for the trees, aren't the tree metaphorically relocating away from the city? Isn't this similar to what happened to the forests and hence to animals living in it? The animals and some of the domestic birds they are being spotted so rarely these days, that one has to go to a zoo to see them. Probably soon we have to go an arboretum to see the once ubiquitous Asopalav, Gulmohar or tree of such likes...