Grassland Restoration

With the Green Team we headed to one of Kodai's marshes, were most of the fresh water is filtered naturally. At first we all thought we would be planting various grasses, as the name would suggest but we ended up removing saplings. That's right, the Green Team was removing trees. The trees we pulled out were the invasive acacia from Australia, which suck up thousands of liters of water out of the ground. By removing the saplings we made a tiny difference on the future of the marsh. Due to fact that nearly all the trees in that area are acacia there are very few animals that can live in this "desert forest". None of the species are native so they cannot support the local fauna. The VCT (Vattakanal Conservation Trust) is working very hard in removing the invasive trees to make room for indigenous grasses and trees. If only the cows would let them! In a country where cows have the right of way everywhere it is hard to keep them away from the young saplings and newly planted grasses. Hopefully they can bring the Indian government on to the scene in order to get some needed funds (fences, man power)...
Bob and Tanya are the founders of VCT, originally from the UK they moved to India and have now been working in the Palni hills for the past 25 years. Check out their website: http://www.vattakanalconservationtrust.org/



It wasn't all tree pulling though, we had lots of fun. We even saw a stick bug! I have never seen one in person, it was amazing how much it looked like a stick. One person did not believe us and was convinced it was a stick, until it started moving!



There was also lots of cool fungi.