The sacred grove of the Manikavu Sree Mahadeva temple in Wayanad under the Malabar Devaswom Board has set a model in transforming barren land into a ‘forest’ with the addition of rare endemic and threatened (RET) plant species of the Western Ghats.
The model has been set up by the temple authorities with the support of M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF), the Social Forestry and Soil Conservation departments and the Meenangadi grama panchayat.
More than 29 acres of land are now under the canopy of nearly 4,000 plants that belong to more than 50 species.