The MPCA, 7 km from Pitezari main gate, is spread over 200 hectares and has some rare medicinal plants, a fact visitors do not know.
"Till recently, it was a tourist hotspot but in a bid to conserve these rare medicinal plants and allow their regeneration, it has been declared MPCA and closed for tourists. We will do in-situ conservation of plants there," said MS Reddy, conservator of forests (CF), Gondia wildlife division. He added, there was a plan to document the plant species.
The MPCA is a public trust registered on December 16, 2002. It was set up with an aim to conserve medicinal plants, make them available to local villagers for developing nurseries, create awareness among people about the plants by involving them, grow these plants at home and generate employment by selling them.
A 15-member committee was initially formed to look after the project. The committee was reconstituted in 2007 with the efforts of forester S M Meshram. He is involved in preparing a list of plants and has shown keen interest in reviving the project.
Meshram had submitted a proposal in this regard to the higher-ups in 2009.
The MPCA in Nagzira was among the 13 projects in Maharashtra as part of the ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). It was implemented in coordination with Foundation for Revitalisation of Local Health Traditions (FRLHT), Bengaluru, and Rural Communes Medicinal Plants Conservation Centre, Pune. Read the full report here.
Source: Vijay Pinjarkar, TNN, Nagpur.
