Kallen pokkudan biography for kids
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Once abundant, Kerala’s mangrove cover, which was spread over more than 700 sq kms has now reduced to 9 sq km, mostly concentrated in the northern district of Kannur. The Valapattanam basin in Kannur is one of the most mangrove rich basins in the region but more than 80% of mangrove trees are on private lands, making it very difficult to develop a government/state led conservation plan for them.
Mangrove vegetation of North Kerala
Back in the 1980’s, mangrove conservation was not on the radar of any government or non-government policy / program. It was then that Kallen Pokkudan from Ezhom started a revolution that changed the way people looked at mangroves and its conservation. It took him nearly 25 years to plant more than one lakh saplings and conserve significantly large stretches, earning him the name Kandal Pokkudan (Kandal is mangrove in Malayalam) and be recognised as The Mangrove Man of India.
Born in 1937, Kallen Pokkudan rea
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Kallen Pokkudan
Kallen Pokkudan (Malayalam: കല്ലേൻ പൊക്കുടൻ; 1937 – 27 September 2015), also known as Kandal Pokkudan, was an Indianenvironmental activist and writer. He was best known for helping to protect mangrove forests in Kerala from 1989 until his death. He also wrote several books even his basic literacy, including to autobiographies.
Pokkudan was born in Ezhom Moola, Idukkil Thara, Kannur. He had six children, three sons and three daughters.
Pokkudan died after an illness on 27 September 2015 in Cherukunnu, Kannur. He was 78.[1]
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The Man who grows Mangroves
Pokkan, a traditional and earthly name for an untouchable pulaya (a downtrodden caste group of agricultural labourers and fisherfolk) born in the 1930s in Kerala is now known as Kallen Pokkudan.
Pokkudan has been living close to the wetlands and, for over a decade, he has been collecting, preserving and planting the seeds of the ‘mad mangrove’ tree (long-fruited, stilted mangrove know as rhizophora mucronata). It does not sound poetical when he says, “Sometimes, I feel I’m another mad mangrove tree.” His name is now synonymous with mangrove conservation in Kerala.
In 1989, at the age of 52, Pokkudan started planting mangrove seedlings in the wetlands of his domestic surroundings. C. Surendranath, journalisty, writes: “Environmentalists had not begun to pay attention to the destruction of mangrove forests, the rainforests of the coastal ecosystem. The Coastal Regulation Zone Act had not come into force. Researchers ha