India Watershed and Reforestation Project

While India's forests are steadily declining, demands grow as the nation's population approaches one billion people. India, already the largest wood consumer in the world, uses over 90 percent of its wood products as subsistence fuel. Further, the denudation of forests have created absolute imbalance in natural bio-diversity - resulting in major threats to flora & fauna, and vagaries in rainfall, severe top-soil erosion, and the lowering of the water table.

The only solution for preventing further calamity is to revert back to the established cycle of nature - through re/afforestation, protection to flora & fauna, and improvement of water resources.

Our Rotary Club of Parker is spearheading a large scale project 50 miles North of Mumbai city (formerly Bombay). The project involves the planting of thousands of saplings on barren slopes of hills (a mix of fuel wood/shade/fruit trees), construction of a damns, trenches, and embankments, and repair/plugging of existing irrigation channels and gullies.

With support from clubs in our District, Seattle, and Bombay, and Rotary International, we will help irrigate 700 hectares of land and directly benefit 1,500 persons (260 families) in 2 villages. Funding (approximately $135,000 US) is being pursued through a multi-district, multi-national matching grant.