Sowing the seeds of a dream; profiles of people who make a difference for trees and forests.Balbir Mathur wants to help reforest re·for·est tr.v. re·for·est·ed, re·for·est·ing, re·for·ests To replant (an area) with forest cover. re the world and feed its s already gone far to make this dream a reality. Seven years ago he founded Trees for Life Trees for Life may refer to: Trees for Life (Scotland) - restoring the Caledonian Forest and promoting the restoration of the world's degraded ecosystems. Trees for Life (United States) - a people-to-people movement that helps plant fruit trees in developing countries. , a non-profit organization A non-profit organization (abbreviated "NPO", also "non-profit" or "not-for-profit") is a legally constituted organization whose primary objective is to support or to actively engage in activities of public or private interest without any commercial or monetary profit purposes. dedicated to planting fruit and forest trees in Third World countries. Mathur sees Trees for Life as something of a laboratory, developing methods to restore a deforested environment and feed the world's hungry with the fruits of its trees. Since its inception in 1983, Trees for Life has planted over a million trees in five states in India. Last January alone, it distributed over 200,000 saplings at a Hindu religious festival. About one third of the trees he distributes are fruit trees, the rest are forest trees. It was in 1982, while working as a consultant to help international businesses set up joint ventures, that Mathur felt the urge to do something about deforestation deforestation Process of clearing forests. Rates of deforestation are particularly high in the tropics, where the poor quality of the soil has led to the practice of routine clear-cutting to make new soil available for agricultural use. . In 1983, while visiting India, he decided to plant some fruit trees and persuaded 2,500 villagers not only to accept and plant them, but to plant 18 more from their seeds each year. Back in Wichita, he told a class of eighth-grade students about that, and they were stirred to start a fund drive to send 103 fruit trees to India. "In that class that day was born the idea for Trees for Life," Mathur said. Now, Trees for Life works to provide India with trees for food, fuel, and reforestation Reforestation The reestablishment of forest cover either naturally or artificially. Given enough time, natural regeneration will usually occur in areas where temperatures and rainfall are adequate and when grazing and wildfires are not too frequent. . Mathur works with a staff of three employees and about 45 volunteers in India and America. This year marked Trees for Life's expansion into Nepal and the distribution of its one millionth tree. By 1992, Mathur hopes to distribute up to five million trees per year. In this country, Trees for Life has a Grow-a-Tree division, which distributes materials, seeds, and instructions to schools, and encourages summer camps for student projects. But Mathur's most ambitious project is a petition drive calling upon the leaders of the U.S. and Soviet Union to join in a move to plant 100 million fruit trees in developing countries. Mathur calls that "a drop in the bucket A reserved amount of memory that holds a single item or multiple items of data. Bucket is somewhat synonymous to "buffer," although buffers are usually memory locations for incoming data records, while buckets tend to be smaller holding areas for calculations. See hash table, buffer and variable. " toward restoring the depleted de·plete tr.v. de·plet·ed, de·plet·ing, de·pletes To decrease the fullness of; use up or empty out. [Latin d forests. But, he said, "These 100 million trees will be an announcement of our commitment to end world hunger and to stop the destruction of the environment." |
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