BERHAMPUR: Fifty-four-year-old Rabindranath Sahu and his team of volunteers have a new routine. They go from village to village collecting ripe dates. After drying them, the seeds are buried six inches deep in ditches, spaced 12 feet apart, and sprayed with medicine.
The man who once championed the cause of Olive Ridley turtles by protecting their nesting grounds at Rushikulya rookery, and later led a spirited campaign to revive house sparrows, is now spearheading a new mission: planting palm trees across the coastal villages of Ganjam.
His reason is urgent. Lightning has emerged as one of Odisha’s biggest killers, claiming 1,625 lives between 2019 and 2024. Mayurbhanj recorded 151 deaths, followed by Ganjam with 114. Palm trees, natural conductors, are considered an effective safeguard. The state has also declared them a scheduled species, banning felling without prior approval.
In response to the government’s call to plant palm trees, Sahu and his fellow volunteers launched Mission Palm Tree in Ganjam.
As part of the campaign, 12,000 palm saplings were planted last year. This effort earned Sahu the Prakriti Mitra award from the state government. Now, his target is to plant around 20,000 saplings in Ganjam’s coastal belt, stretching from Prayagi village to Gopalpur. So far, more than 1,500 seeds have been planted in Patubandh, Palibandh, and Lankapadia, with another 700 in Agastya village. At least 20,000 saplings were planted around Tampara Lake, and over 1,200 on the banks of the Rushikulya river.
“In the last 11 years, more than 4,000 people in the state have lost their lives to lightning-most of them farmers and rural residents. Just last month, three women died while working in the fields in Chhatrapur and Ganjam blocks,” recalls Sahu, secretary of the Rushikulya Sea Turtle Protection Committee and the House Sparrow Conservation Samiti.
The current leg of seed collection and planting began in July and will conclude by the end of September. The mission has received strong support from the Odisha Biodiversity Board, Forest Department, and Odisha Environment Society. Alongside Sahu, members of the Rushikulya Sea Turtle Protection Committee - R Ganesh Reddy, Diwan Behera, Shubham Reddy, Ramesh Reddy, Ashish Das, and P Prabhakar - are actively participating in the initiative.
“It takes eight to 10 months for a palm tree to grow and many years to bear fruit. Our goal is to plant more than 50,000 trees within three years. The biggest challenge though is collecting seeds, which requires visiting many villages,” Sahu explains.
The environmental crusader urges people to join hands to protect and preserve palm trees.