HYDERABAD: University of Hyderabad students undertook a ‘lake clean-up’ campaign on the campus on Sunday and cleared the Buffalo lake of garbage.
The cleanliness drive, held for the first time at the university to protect its water bodies for wildlife consumption, saw the participation of over 40 students.
“There are five lakes on our campus but due to poor maintenance and other reasons, three of them have dried up. Even the other two lakes, Buffalo and Peacock, are full of garbage. In order to protect the wildlife and the biodiversity on the campus, we have started this initiative. From now on, the clean-up drive will be conducted at regular intervals,” said Ravi Jillapalli, founder of Wild Lens, the group which took up the initiative.
“On the campus we have a wide variety of wildlife-be it animals, birds or reptiles-all these are dependent on these lakes for water consumption. One of the main reasons which motivated us to launch this programme is the concern to provide the wildlife quality water to drink,” Rahul Kumar V, a student, said.
Apart from students, members of the administrative staff from various departments also participated in the programme and discussed the protective measures needed to be taken for preservation of natural water bodies and wildlife on the campus.
“Our lakes are so valuable and we are destroying them slowly. It is time we realised this fact and started preserving our lakes so that we don’t have to face problems in future,” Karthik J said. The Wild Lens team has nearly 650 members and mainly focuses on wildlife protection, photography and anti-poaching, and works for enrichment of the campus biodiversity.