Bhubaneswar: Team Wildies, a group of nature enthusiasts in association with Chandaka Wildlife Division conducted the ‘Nature Trail’ of students of Mothers Public School, Khandagiri at Chandaka Wildlife Sanctuary (WLS) Wednesday morning.
The Chandaka WLS can be termed as the ‘lungs’ of Bhubaneswar city spread over 176 sq km with several biodiversities and flora & fauna. The jungle is famous for all the wild animals like leopard, chital, barking deer, wild boar, small Indian civet, pangolin, sloth beer, ratels among others.
Since the children are the future protectors of the forests, it has been a consistent effort of ‘Team Wildies’ to take them on nature’s trail and let them feel the essence of it. The children were overwhelmed to see the elephant couple – Nanda & Yasoda- present at Godibari Gate. Further, the pug marks, skate of animals and chirping of various birds along with the nest of weaver birds amused the students.
The Team Wildies consists of various professionals from diversified fields namely Kumud Ranjan Rath, Subhendu Bhattacharjya, Jyoti Ranjan Samantaray, Mamta Parmar, Deepak Sahu, Chandrakant Pattanayak, Chitta Ranjan Mohapatra, Prasant Choudhury, Debasish Mohapatra, Bithi Das, Piyus Goenka and Binay Dube. They guided the students and shared their knowledge regarding wilds.
There was also a doubt-clearing session followed by documentary presentation by Soumendra Tripathy. The students were also enlightened with many tales related to Chandaka. “Exposure of wildlife for the young generation living inside the ‘concrete-jungle’ is highly essential as air pollution of the city can only be controlled by the enhancement of the forest,” said Jyoti Ranjan Samantaray, a member of Team Wildies and an inspector of police by profession.
“Every citizen of the city including children should go into the wilderness to feel the peace and tranquility there so that they would feel the essence of having greeneries around them inside the city,” Subhendu Bhattacharjya, co-founder of Wildies, basically a techie by profession, said.