Plant rainbows on our hills

Well, let me give our Prime Minister and Minister of Agriculture full credit for this.

I am certainly impressed that someone - and moreso from this environmentally challenged government - has finally recognized the critical value of reforestation in areas along the Northern Range. And the preparation of healthy seedlings and saplings is a preliminary step in any reforestation project. That this first step has been quietly taken over the past several months is a welcome indication that the project may have been inspired and guided by practical considerations rather than by political motives.

There is very little “political benefit” to be wrung from the green lime that sours consideration of environmental issues in our planning and development discussions. So I will give the Prime Minister and his government encouragement and support for this initiative. Indeed I must, for I am among those lost voices in the wilderness which have been calling for the protection of our forests and the reforestation of denuded hillsides for years now.

In 2000, before I began this column with Newsday, I had called for our barren, burning hillsides to be replanted with flowering trees. In an article titled, The trees belong to me, I called for us to “plant rainbows on our hillsides”. The then Minister of Agriculture ridiculed the suggestion.

And he did this without consulting his own forestry people who do work in small ways to save our hillsides in the absence of any government (at any time!) programme or support for their initiatives. I know of forestry officers, who lacking any real power to prevent people felling trees “to make garden”, give the gardeners tree saplings to plant between their crops, so when the garden soil plays out, the new trees will be growing. Some gardeners do plant the trees, many do not. But the trees that are planted have a head start on the tall grasses, strangling vines and the like that will rapidly fill the abandoned garden space.

They would have grown for their first few years in the cleared garden space.

Which brings us to an important point in this new tree planting initiative: I am confident that the tree planting sessions will be well organized, hopefully with many keen volunteers among the forestry staff setting all of these trees in suitably cleared spaces. Fruit trees, flowering trees, softwood trees and hardwood trees, all to be set as little saplings into holes dug in the hillsides. Some of these will be on very steep slopes, some on the ridges, and many down in the valleys to where streams once flowed. And the potential for magic here is that old streams, when trees are planted along their banks, will spring and flow again! So let us all look forward to the planting sessions and support the initiative, and the people who will go out to start this very worthwhile project.

And when the planting is done? Well, some words of appreciation for that step would be welcome.

But everybody involved, especially all the governing minds, had better understand that while the planting may be done, the “journey now start”. And before the happy volunteers come down from the hills, the grasses, the weeds, the strangling vines, will be growing - growing to smother all the trees. Within a few short weeks the grasses will be taller than the saplings. By next dry season the grass will be over six feet tall, dried to crisps and burning in fires set by us to “clean the land” of snakes and animals. And when the fires pass, there will be no more saplings to grow into trees.

So we need to hear from the government what are their plans to maintain and care for the trees which we will work so hard to plant? How many times between the planting and the next dry season, let us say in March 2018, will workers walk these new plantations, cutting the grasses and clearing the strangling vines from the saplings? Because if they are not going to do this on a regular and sustainable basis, they better not waste their time planting this year. Hold the saplings until they have a plan to ensure their survival. But who knows? In this strange place we endure, maybe the whole idea is to create a massive failure, so when all the newly planted slopes are burning, government can say “Well, we tried, but you see what happened?” and then write off “the environment” as a hindrance to development and watch the hillsides wash into the sea? Prove me wrong, please Mr Prime Minister. Ensure a really memorable and lasting legacy!