Palm trees are especially useful against natural disasters, including lightning. To save them from disappearing and to protect the balance of the environment, 67-year-old imam Md Khorshed Ali of No 7 Chilarang union in Thakurgaon has sown 5,000 palm seeds every year from 2014 to 2021. More than 35,000 palm saplings are now in his care.

Imam Md Khorshed Ali is a village doctor by profession. The 3,500 trees grown from seeds he sowed on 29 September 2014 from Relghunti in Chilarang union to Akhanagar railway station are now somewhat visible. He sold his ancestral farmland to plant the trees, but did not stop.

Collecting palm seeds was not easy. It took a great deal of work and labourers to go from village to village gathering them. He has carried out the work along both sides of roads for about 8 km from Palli Bidyut Bazar in Thakurgaon Sadar upazila to Kadsuka bridge in Baliadangi upazila, and for 10 km from Kadsuka bridge to Chowrangi Bazar. Asked how much it had cost, he declined to reveal the figure.

"Money is not what matters on a person's path. I want to live on in people's memory," Khorshed Ali said. "To protect the balance of the environment, I have sown palm seeds at various places and along roadsides in Thakurgaon district over the past seven years." He has employed a watchman to tend the trees regularly.

"Every year I have sown 5,000 palm seeds along the roads. I am grateful to those who helped with this work," he said. He called on well-off members of society to come forward alongside individual efforts to sow palm seeds, to protect nature, the environment and people from disasters and keep the environment in balance.

He said he wants to distribute at least 10 saplings of different species free of charge to every educational institution in Thakurgaon Sadar upazila this monsoon, and about 30,000 saplings are being prepared for this. He also urged everyone to plant at least five saplings of different species and called on the authorities to distribute more saplings through the government.

Rafiqul Islam, officer in charge of the Thakurgaon forest department, said Khorshed Ali's work will stand as a unique example across the country, and if more people did the same it would benefit the nation and the environment. He urged everyone to come forward and plant palms and other trees as Khorshed Ali has.

Abu Hossain, deputy director of the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) in Thakurgaon, and Sadar upazila agriculture officer Krishna Roy said palm trees contribute to the natural environment and are especially useful in preventing natural disasters, including lightning. Imam Md Khorshed Ali has taken an exceptional initiative to protect the environment and guard against disasters and deserves praise, they said, and the new generation should follow his example and join such tree-planting programmes to save the environment.

Thakurgaon deputy commissioner Md Mahbubur Rahman, the district police administration and people from various walks of life have praised Khorshed Ali for the initiative.

"People who serve the country with this kind of labour are very rare today. I commend Imam Md Khorshed Ali's initiative. We should reward him for this work," the deputy commissioner said, adding that the district administration would also be encouraged to follow his example.

Source: Ittefaq. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.