Successfully complete Phase 1 and 2 of tree plantation to develop India’s first PPP Wildlife Corridor between Kanha and Pench
- In each phase, 100,000 trees were planted over 100 hectares of land
- Project to enhance forest cover across 300 hectares over 3 years, linking Kanha and Pench
- Creates over 25,000 work days of employment for women and local tribal communities
- Helps Vodafone India to offset the carbon footprint generated by its offices across the country
Jabalpur, 5 November, 2015: Vodafone India, one of India’s leading telecom service providers and Grow-Trees.com, the exclusive Indian Planting Partner for United Nation’s Environment Program’s Billion Tree Campaign, today announced the successful completion of Phase 1 and 2 of their joint project to improve the wildlife corridor between Kanha – Pench wildlife reserves by planting 200,000 trees on 200 hectares of forest land. Launched in August 2014, this project will by next year have a total of 300,000 trees planted over 300 hectares of forest land between Kanha Tiger Sanctuary in Madhya Pradesh and Pench in Maharashtra. In phase 1, 100,000 saplings were planted near Rata village last year and in phase 2, another 100,000 saplings were planted near Devdara village earlier this year. Both the villages are located in Mandla district.
The successful completion of Phase 1 and 2 was formally announced by Manish Kumar, Business Head – Madhya Pradesh & Chhattisgarh, Vodafone India and Mr. Bikrant Tiwary, CEO, Grow-Trees.com, at a special press meet organised in Jabalpur today.
Sharing details about Vodafone’s support to the project, 
This project will create about 25,000 workdays of direct jobs mainly for women and tribals inhabiting the area in addition to supporting several allied livelihood generating activities such as farming, fruit and honey gathering etc. on a sustained basis. The site is in Sijhora Range and would be jointly protected by three villages- Majhipur, Jogisoda and Chandiya. A variety of trees, including Karani, Harra, Baheda, Bamboo, Khamer, Ladiya, Mango and Amla, that are local to the region will be planted. Saplings of these were grown in the special nurseries funded by Grow-Trees.com.
Speaking on the occasion, Mr Bikrant Tiwary, CEO, Grow-Trees.com, said, “Approximately 45% of India’s land is degraded primarily due to deforestation, unsustainable agricultural practices, mining and excessive groundwater extraction. More than two thirds of this can be regenerated and our endeavour is to facilitate this by providing planting opportunities to individual and corporate customers. We are delighted to have Vodafone India as our corporate partner to support this novel project of wildlife corridors for enlarging wildlife habitats. The size and scale of this private corridor reforestation initiative is the biggest till date in the country. The planting process on site will be led by our on ground partner FES.”
About Kanha and Pench Tiger reserves
Kanha Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh and Pench Tiger Reserve straddling Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra are important habitats for the tiger population in central India. As tigers need large home ranges to ensure population viability, it is important to ensure habitat connectivity between different breeding areas. The Kanha– Pench corridor therefore gains high importance in the efforts to save the tiger and other wildlife. Such a corridor is vital for the long term survival and viability of tigers as it connects smaller tiger populations in Pench to larger populations such as at Kanha.
Without these linkages tiger populations isolated within individual tiger reserves face a higher risk of extinction due to poaching and loss in genetic vigour over generations. A tiger straying out of a forest also has to confront a range of challenges such as hostile villagers, retaliatory poisoning for livestock kills, poaching, and electrocution by live wires, apart from road and rail traffic that cause further fragmentation of forest cover. The trees planted will help improve the forest connectivity between Kanha and Pench and provide a sheltered corridor for tigers and animals to traverse between the two reserves.
About Grow Trees
www.Grow-Trees.com gives companies and individuals the ability to plant trees from their computer to welcome new customers, celebrate birthdays, anniversaries, festivals or special occasions. Companies and individuals can send a personalized e-TreeCertificate with their message and logo or personal photograph. Trees are planted only on government and community lands with the objective of benefitting rural communities (through flowers, fruit, fuel and fodder), wildlife, improving water catchment areas, preventing soil erosion, reversing deforestation and fighting global warming by decarbonising the atmosphere. Grow-Trees was launched on World Environment Day, June 5, 2010. About 1,317,000 trees have been planted so far through the site in different projects across India by over 250 companies and thousands of individuals.
About Vodafone India
Vodafone India is a fully owned subsidiary of Vodafone Group Plc., which is one of the world’s largest telecommunications companies. Making its entry into India in 2007, Vodafone today has built an ever growing, robust business in highly price sensitive and competitive market. Serving around 188 million customers, Vodafone provides innovative, customer friendly and differentiated products and services through a wide scale distribution and exclusive retail footprint – backed up with a modern, technologically advanced network for both voice and data. With over 9800 branded retail stores, covering over 1.54 million sq.ft. and attracting more than 115million footfalls annually, Vodafone India is now amongst the largest retailers in the country actively engaged in the holistic development of India’s rapidly growing retail sector.
Vodafone Business Services, the enterprise arm of Vodafone, provides total telecommunications solutions across both mobility and wireline platforms and enables Global Enterprises, National Corporates, SME’s and Government segments to communicate, collaborate and connect. With the advantage of its global expertise and knowledge of local markets, Vodafone India is well poised to significantly expand the Government’s capacity to deliver benefits and outcomes for citizens, governments and businesses. Vodafone endeavours to be a steadfast partner in the Government’s efforts towards Digital India.
Vodafone India provides customers with a new currency in the form of M-Pesa – the world renowned mobile wallet and money transfer service, which was ranked Number one in Fortune’s ‘Change The World’ list of technology initiatives influencing lives. Vodafone M-Pesa is an innovative, safe and secure mobile wallet that enables complete suite of services like money transfer, bill payments, and recharge on the move from the mobile. It caters to all segments of the society, from the unbanked to the under banked and to the net-savvy and evolved customers. Today, with a pan-India distribution of over 95,000 agents and more than 3.6 million customers, Vodafone M-Pesa is the largest banking correspondent in the country and is playing a vital role in enabling financial inclusion and m-commerce. The payment bank licence by RBI acts as an impetus and will enable Vodafone M-Pesa to build on this further and offer a more comprehensive portfolio of banking and financial products and services, accelerating India’s journey into a cashless economy.
A value based organization; Vodafone is committed to achieving the highest standards of Health, Safety and Well-being for its employees and business partners. As a responsible corporate, Vodafone India has been working with several partners from the social sector to address some of India’s most pressing challenges over the years. Sustainability for us is an ongoing journey as we firmly believe that what is good for the society is good for business. The Vodafone Foundation too is actively engaged in CSR by harnessing the potential of mobile services and technology to maximize impact within communities, especially in the domains of m-Women, m-Agriculture, m-Education and Disaster Relief.
Vodafone is one of the world’s largest telecommunications companies and provides a range of services including voice, messaging, data and fixed communications. Vodafone has mobile operations in 26 countries, partners with mobile networks in 55 more, and fixed broadband operations in 17 markets. As of 30 June 2015, Vodafone had 449 million mobile customers and 12 million fixed broadband customers. For more information, please visit:www.vodafone.com.