A bus conductor from Coimbatore has won acclaim for single-handedly planting over 38,000 trees in Tamil Nadu in the last 28 years.
“I am a native of Mayiladuthurai, near Nagapattinam. I was amazed by the beauty of the Nilgiris where I worked as a sales representative after finishing school. After having witnessed trees being smuggled out, I had staged a protest. Such events ignited the spark in me to work for conserving the environment,” Yoganathan, who works for the Tamil Nadu State Road Transport Corporation (TNSTC), told the Times of India.
Before bagging a job with the TNSTC, he was employed at a tea estate in Kodanad, where he worked with Tamil Nadu Green Movement’s Jayachandran. Yoganathan was also one of the environmentalists who protested the felling of trees in the Nilgiris during the 1980s, The Better India reported.
According to the report, he has visited over 3,000 schools in Tamil Nadu to spread awareness about the environment. He helps organise plantation drives, where each sapling is named after the child who plants it.
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