The Forest Department has been working on an ambitious plan to plant 16,500 sandalwood saplings in the reserve forest areas in Shobanapuram and Sengattupatti at the foot of the Pachamalai.
Work on raising the nurseries has been in full swing at Shobanapuram and the saplings would be planted during the onset of monsoon in October.
The soil in Shobanapuram and its surrounding areas was best suited for raising sandalwood trees, and the reserve forest area here accounts for a large number of sandalwood trees.
The massive saplings planting campaign, to be taken up under the ‘Sandalwood Regeneration Programme’, aims at improving sandalwood coverage area, official sources said.
The saplings would be planted on 50 hectares of land in these villages.
The current programme follows the success of the massive tree planting campaign taken up about three years ago.
In the last phase, a total of 1,000 saplings of various varieties, including sandalwood, neem, pungan, aavi, naaval, and neermaruthu, were planted at Pachamalai
“We took special care to protect these species by periodically watering them. Although the saplings were planted successfully, scanty rainfall posed a huge challenge,” the sources said pointing to the huge effort that has gone into protecting these saplings.