HYDERABAD: He is a man of many parts—a water rights activist, a trendsetter, an author, and a resource person for students, government officials and nature lovers in and beyond Telangana. But primarily he is one who walks the nature conservation talk.
Meet Dusharla Satyanarayana, 69, who converted his 70-acre ancestral land into a forest and went on to dig a canal to irrigate it and create small waterbodies. He has been at it since childhood.
A native of Raghavapuram village of Mothe mandal in Suryapet district of Telangana, he is confident his legacy will outlive him. "My son is a veterinary doctor. He, too, is a nature lover and isn't money-minded. The forest will survive even after I pass away," he assures.
His forest is home to a plethora of wildlife. "If a 50-year-old tree adds an estimated `1,58,46,500 value to earth, then the total value added by my forest should be in the range of `2,000 to `3,000 crore," he points out.
Besides the forest, Satyanarayana started the ‘Jala Sadhana Samithi’ the 1980s, which was a movement to bring irrigation to the water-starved lands of the erstwhile Nalgonda and Mahabubnagar districts.
His activism also brought the issue of fluorosis affecting the people of Nalgonda to the national stage, and forced the government to take remedial action.