Last Tree Standing

Security beefed up, fences raised, and boundaries barbed. What’s being protected so religiously in the High court campus of Bangalore is not some high profile personality or a rare diamond but then nothing less in value; it’s a humble sandalwood tree. The last one left in the city.

In the Karnataka High Court Campus of Cubbon Park in Bangalore stands this well guarded, last surviving tree of the sandalwood family in the city. When last counted, a few years back, there were 20 more in Cubbon Park alone, and a total of around 100 in the city. Now it is the last one in the state capital. All left for the capital to smell, is a single sandalwood tree in the court campus. Rest have all fallen victim to smugglers’ acts and in all probability ended into bottles of sandalwood oil in a distant nation.

Bangalore special

The sandalwood tree can grow in almost any part of India (which is why any Indian will recognize the fragrant wood, even though they might refer to sandalwood by one of its many aliases.) Sandalwood tree flourishes in regions where the climate is cool with moderate rainfall, plentiful sunshine and long periods of dry weather.

According to state forest department RFO (Bangalore range) YG Chandrappa, Sandalwood grown in Bangalore city is of finer quality as compared to those in the forest areas or in other parts of the state. “Even in forests we do not find such good quality of sandalwood as in Bangalore, which is due to the peculiar quality of soil and weather here,” Chandrappa says.

Finer the quality, higher the demand, so much so that the smugglers from neighboring states such as Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh even could not resist the temptation of grabbing a share of Bangalore’s wood.

True preview

It’s a sample of the state of sandalwood in India. The Western Ghats is the only patch in the world where sandalwood grows. Yes, the south Indian land of Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, which used to offer the best and the only sandalwood in the world, is now deprived of its riches. A million dollar question: Is the wood, which is better known as chandan to Indians, soon going to bury itself forever in the past?

Sandalwood is the only wood in the world which retains its sweet and blissful scent for decades thereby making it the only wood in the world which is priced and sold in kilograms. Producing commercially valuable sandalwood with high levels of fragrance oils requires the tree to be around fourteen years of age.

Wonder what would the coming generations of Hindu priests use to adorn the deities’ and their own foreheads. Days look counted for the wood supposed to be so holy that pundits didn’t let anyone else touch and prepared paste of with their own hands for puja rituals.

Thieves on guard

The hideouts of the legendary bandit Veerappan, known as the largest smuggler of sandalwood, quote an interesting irony. His hideouts (like Chamrajnagar) now make for the last resorts where these trees are left safe and intact. Thanks to the fear trails left behind by the brigand himself. For the remaining few sandalwood pockets, life exists only till they don’t fall in sight of the sandal mafias.

Veerappan, who was initially in the criminal list for gathering $2.6 million by killing 2000 elephants, was accused of smuggling wood worth $22 million. At one point, more than 2,000 police officers were combing forests in the bandit’s search and offered a reward of 20 million rupees ($410,000) for his capture. Charged with the killing of over 120 men including forest officers, policemen and ministers, Veerappan was the most wanted criminal of his time. Veerappan’s end in a police encounter in October 2004 took too long to happen. By then the sandalwood massacre had already reached its optimum. The supply from Sathyamangalam forests, Veerappan’s territory, had virtually dried up.

The Deputy Superintendent of Police (forest cell) M.K. Murali says that now the smuggling has declined drastically “simply because there are hardly any more trees left to chop and smuggle.” Although 88 cases of sandalwood tree theft were reported in the year 2007, by 2009 the figure had gone up to 102 reports and 128 accused were arrested. Most of the factories extracting the fragrant liquid gold from the wood are situated in the neighboring state of Kerala and they easily do away with the illegal activity because of lax forest laws in the state. Laws in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka do not allow the same.

Nearing the ‘critically endangered species’ level, Indian sandalwood has been pronounced to be government’s conserved property and unauthorized felling and exporting of the wood and its produce is illegal. Despite the law and surveillance, smugglers keep on axing in lure of the ‘heartwood’. Each tree yields around 30 kilograms of ‘heartwood’, which is officially priced at over Rs 5000 per kilogram. A liter of sandalwood oil is obtained only when one ton of wood is crushed. Forest department itself considers the defence areas and bandit hideouts to be the only safe spots for sandalwood trees.

Feeble efforts

The high court recently issued notices to the chief secretary and the principal secretary of the department of the environment, ecology and forests in a petition seeking measures to safeguard sandalwood in the state. Retired forester, writer and activist CH Basapannavar has filed a PIL seeking the constitution of a sandalwood development authority.

While the Indian government controls the cutting down of all sandalwood trees, there are no current laws forbidding its exportation.  As a result, smuggling has become a serious issue.  Approximately seventy five percent of all sandalwood leaving India is done so illegally. 

Though the demand for the royal tree has continued to increase, its supply spirals downward causing price increases thus affecting buyers to rely on the importation of similar sandalwood.

After Indian, standing close in quality and demand is Australian sandalwood. With a tight vigil on the continued restoration of Australia’s natural resource, the country’s government succeeded in protecting its sandalwood from the immediate danger of extinction thus escaping the fate of Indian sandalwood. Why do we always need examples to follow? How come we unfailingly fail in the race to protect our races?