BHUBANESWAR: Every Sunday morning, Rahul Maharana of Khurda sets out on a solo journey to Devi estuary near Astaranga in Puri district. But the trip is not for fun. With a gunny bag on his back, he collects every piece of garbage, litter or waste on the beach and the mangrove nearby. This has become the routine for this 22-year-old youth of Ambadiha village in Khurda for over the last one month.
Moved by the gradual denudation of mangrove cover in Devi estuary due to pollution, Rahul, a security guard with a private company in Bhubaneswar, has launched a clean-up drive to protect the estuary from waste, polluting materials and revive mangrove forest in the wetland.
He removes solid waste, including plastic, clothes and other non-degradable wastes that are getting deposited in huge volumes in the estuary every year. Rahul launched his drive to clean the beach and the estuary on January 8 this year and has single-handedly cleared over 935 kg waste so far.
It all started when he visited Astaranga along with his friends and saw the estuary littered with waste. A little ahead in the mangrove, he found deposits of more such waste covered in several layers of thick mud. “I decided to come here at least once every week and clean the place,” he says.
Every Sunday, he collects solid waste from the Astaranga beach and Devi estuary and keeps them in a gunny bag at a secure place. After collecting one tonne of waste, he plans to transport it to the waste processing unit at Konark where it will be safely disposed of.
He said the waste thrown into the river by the people residing on the banks are getting deposited in the estuary which is causing serious problems to the mangrove ecosystem in the area. Besides, there is little awareness on protection of mangrove irrespective of the fact that they play a significant role in protecting the land from cyclone and sea ingress during tidal surge.
The latest mangrove cover assessment carried out by the Forest Survey of India for the year 2021 also suggests that mangrove cover has denuded in Puri in the last two years owing to various reasons.
Odisha’s mangrove cover, spread over five districts - Kendrapara, Balasore, Bhadrak, Jagatsinghpur and Puri - stands at around 259 square km, around 8 square km more than the previous assessment carried out in 2019. However, Puri, the worst hit district in cyclonic storm Fani in 2019, has only 1.13 square km of mangrove cover that too in a denuded state. The report reveals that mangrove cover has reduced in Puri district by .02 per cent in the last two years.
Rahul, who had previously collected around 500 bags of plastic from Pir Jahania beach, Rushikulya mass nesting site and other places, says he would continue the drive as long as he can. The green warrior also plans to launch awareness camps at villages to sensitise people on hazards of pollution and importance of protecting mangroves.