It was June 5, 2009 when the residents of Karma village of Chauparan block of Hazaribagh district had taken the pledge to save the forest and animals of their locality. Since last eight years they are maintaining their pledge and in 9th year on Monday June 5, 2017 it was proudly announced in the meeting held in the village that more than 1000 hectares of land has regained the greenery and many animals have started making their shelter in this forest area.
The officials of forest department were specially present on this day to congratulate the villagers for their achievement and said that the department is ready to provide financial assistance to them in the ongoing process of numbering of the trees. The villagers are giving numbers to the trees of the area and till date they have allotted numbers to more than 5000 trees with the help of green and yellow paint.
A villager said that 9 year ago they first felt that our adjacent forest area is getting destroyed by wood mafia on a rapid pace. Due to this they had started facing scarcity of fuel wood, seasonal fruits and even leaf plates for use during festivals and ceremonies. They constituted gram development committee in 2009, Bhagi Ravidas was elected president, Mahadev Rana was elected secretary and Degni Devi as treasurer.
Soon active members started to join the committee and within a year the number of active members reached to 202. It was decided that on every Sunday there will be a meeting of this committee and those who will attend the meeting will have to pay a fine of rupees 250. The committee decided to save the forest and to punish all those who will harm the bio-diversity of the area. To keep eye on the forest teams of seven member each was constituted and they started roaming in the area. Initially they found it difficult to fight with the bad elements but finally they conquered to take the situation in control.
Now due to the efforts of the villagers of Karma more than 1000 hectare land has again become green having trees of various species. As the forest regained its beauty the animals also started coming back to this area and once again the villagers are getting pure air, water, fuel and other products from the forest which they had lost due to ignorance 10 years ago.