Imphal: A 47-year-old man in Manipur’s Imphal West district has converted barren land into a 300 acre forest with a wide variety of plant species in 20 years.
Moirangthem Loiya, who hails from Uripok Khaidem Leikai area of the district, started planting trees on the outskirts of Imphal town in the Langol Hill range about 20 years ago.
A nature lover from his childhood days, Loiya told PTI, “in early 2000, after completing my college studies from Chennai, when I went to the Koubru mountain, I was appalled by the wide scale deforestation of the previously thick vegetation that marked the Koubru hill ranges. I felt a strong urge to give back to mother nature what we humans as a whole have destroyed so much in modern times.” The search soon led him to Maru Langol renamed “Punshilok Maru” or “Spring of Life” in the Langol Hill range on the outskirts of capital Imphal town.
