Yvonne Ba­boolal

The Gov­ern­ment is seek­ing to use the pow­er of na­ture to com­bat dev­as­tat­ing land­slides and flood­ing in La Sei­va which dis­placed some 19 fam­i­lies dur­ing last No­vem­ber's heavy rains. This was dis­closed yes­ter­day at the launch of a tree plant­i­ng ex­er­cise in Mar­aval Val­ley at the La Sei­va Com­mu­ni­ty Fa­cil­i­ty. "As the whole world fo­cus­es on the preser­va­tion of na­ture as mit­i­ga­tion and adap­ta­tion strate­gies against the ef­fects of cli­mate change, there is a cor­re­spond­ing im­per­a­tive for all of us to nur­ture a more abun­dant ex­is­tence of trees," Min­is­ter of Hous­ing and the En­vi­ron­ment Dr Roodal Mooni­lal said dur­ing an ad­dress.

He said the Mar­aval ex­er­cise marks the launch of a mas­sive dri­ve by the Min­istry's Forestry Di­vi­sion to re­for­est crit­i­cal de­for­est­ed ar­eas of the west­ern North­ern Range. Mooni­lal re­called that ex­ces­sive rain­fall dur­ing last Oc­to­ber and No­vem­ber wreaked hav­oc in the Diego Mar­tin and Mar­aval val­leys. He said the un­usu­al­ly heavy rains re­sult­ed in ex­ces­sive runoff, ac­cel­er­at­ed soil ero­sion, heavy sil­ta­tion of wa­ter­cours­es and dev­as­tat­ing flood­ing of homes, busi­ness­es and road­ways. The Min­is­ter re­called that af­fect­ed fam­i­lies had to be shel­tered at the La Sei­va Com­mu­ni­ty Fa­cil­i­ty and fed and clothed.

Some whose homes were de­stroyed were giv­en Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion hous­es. He said the re­al so­lu­tion to ero­sion and flood­ing on steep hill­side slopes lie in main­tain­ing a healthy veg­e­ta­tion tree cov­er over a long pe­ri­od of time. "It is the vi­sion of this Gov­ern­ment to en­rich the for­est veg­e­ta­tion on the hill­sides to en­hance the sta­bil­i­sa­tion of the slopes, thus re­duc­ing the in­ci­dences of land­slides and floods." Mooni­lal said Cab­i­net re­cent­ly ap­proved a long-term Na­tion­al Re­for­esta­tion Plan which in­clud­ed the re-green­ing of burnt ar­eas. He said La Sei­va would be a fo­cus of at­ten­tion in this plan.

The tree plant­i­ng ex­er­cise in the area is be­ing joint­ly con­duct­ed by the Forestry Di­vi­sion, the Na­tion­al Re­for­esta­tion and Wa­ter­shed Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Project, CEPEP and the Diego Mar­tin Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (DM­RC). DM­RC chair­man An­tho­ny Sam­my said in his ad­dress: "If we plant trees in ar­eas that have been af­fect­ed by land­slides it firms up the soil and pro­vides pro­tec­tion and ero­sion con­trol mech­a­nism in the cheap­est and prob­a­bly most ef­fi­cient way." Sam­my said the cor­po­ra­tion would soon un­veil a com­ple­men­tary pro­gramme to en­hance the En­vi­ron­ment Min­istry's tree plant­i­ng ex­er­cise. Con­ser­va­tor of Forests (Ag), Seep­er­sad Ram­nar­ine, told the gath­er­ing of res­i­dents and Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials that a 1996 study of wa­ter­sheds showed that the Mar­aval Wa­ter­shed had the high­est lev­el of degra­da­tion.

"There­fore, the best place to start any re­for­esta­tion project is in this wa­ter­shed," he said. Ram­nar­ine said 8,000 hectares of forests that the Forestry Di­vi­sion plant­ed in the fire-scarred slopes of the North­ern Range be­tween 1972 and 1990 were de­stroyed by wild­fires and res­i­den­tial and agri­cul­tur­al squat­ting. He said the di­vi­sion was em­bark­ing on a third ini­tia­tive to re­plant the area and he warned, "What hap­pened late last year in the low­er reach­es of the Mar­aval and Diego Mar­tin wa­ter­sheds will con­tin­ue to hap­pen if we do not start now."