A campaign to save the last surviving primary forest in Europe launched last September in Warsaw still continues. Biolowieza Forest, spread over an area of 1,500 sq km and lying in Poland and

FIVE YEARS ago, the social forestry department in Ratnagiri district of Maharashtra cleared several trees from a forest near Nandivse village to plant acacia trees. It did not know that the 4-ha patch was a sacred grove surrounding the temple of a powerful local deity, Kal Bhairon. The villagers, too, joined in because they were paid for the felling and planting.