The Contribution of Goa Province to Ecology by Pratapananda Naik, S.J.

 

The Contribution of Goa Province to Ecology


Pratapananda Naik, S.J.



In 1995 when the new building work for Thomas Stephens Konknni Kendr (TSKK) began at Provorim, Goa, Fr. Pratap Naik, sj who was the assistant director of TSKK besides supervising the construction work, took the lead to establish a mini botanical garden of local edible fruit trees and local flower bearing plants and trees and other local trees.  It was entirely his vision to preserve and promote local ecology. He took great interest and personally worked for this project. Every plant in the garden had a name plate with its local name in Konknni, popular name in English and the botanical name. In the year when he was appointed as the director of TSKK there were over 300 species of plants and trees in TSKK botanical garden. It became the source of attraction for botany students of various colleges in Goa for study tour. Besides, those who were interested to know more about local plants and wanted to see them visited TSKK garden. Doordarshan, Goa, telecast two documentary programmes giving information of TSKK garden. The Botanical Society of Goa gave a special award to TSKK garden in the category of private gardens.  Pratap Naik was named as “a priest with green fingers” by known journalist Frederick Noronha and gave wide publicity to Pratap’s contribution to preserve local plants and trees.  Local birds and even migratory birds found TSKK garden as a shelter for them to rest and breed. Pratap Naik is out of TSKK from 2012. What is the current status of the mini botanical garden of TSKK? Is there any further progress or regress has set in? These and other related questions of the garden could be answered only by the present day authorities of TSKK.

Around the year 2000 when the building work was in its final stage at Pedro Arrupe Institute (PAI) at Raia, Goa, Fr. Savio Rodrigues, sj took the initiative to plant a number of fruit bearing trees in PAI garden. He also planted a number of decorative outdoor and indoor plants. When he was transferred from PAI the indoor plants at PAI cease to exist. At present what was planted by Savio exists without further maintenance and development.

At present the only noteworthy and praiseworthy project in Goa Province to take care of the ecology in massive scale is done by” Jana Jagaran (JJ)”. Fr. Joseph Chenakala, sj  is the director of JJ and it is his vision and mission to preserve and promote ecology among many other projects of JJ. JJ besides cultivating its land at Xavier Farm at Santibastwad, Belgaum, Karnataka, promotes water shedding to preserve rain water. Every year JJ builds hundreds Gobar Gas plants in villages to create alternative energy for cooking.  JJ maintains all the gas units built by them. Therefore these gas units are still functioning. JJ conducts awareness programmes and courses for the village leaders to preserve the environment.  JJ’s projects and programmes are highly appreciated in private and government circles.

It is a sad fact that in Goa Province, Jesuits as a group are not much involved to protect and promote ecology. They talk about it and at the most pray for it during their evening prayers!

 

21 October 2015

 

 

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