User:Hayleydove/sandbox

Tulsi Gowda, sometimes referred to as Tulasi Gowda due to differing translations, is an Indian environmentalist from Honnali village, Ankola taluk in Karnataka state. She has planted more than 30,000 saplings and looks after the nurseries of the Karnataka Forest Department. Despite having no formal education, she has made immense contributions towards preserving the environment. Her work has been honoured by the government of India and various organizations. She was honoured with Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian award of India, on 26 January 2020.

Early Life
Tulsi Gowda was born in 1944 into the Hakkali tribal family within the Honnalli village, a settlement transitioning between rural and urban within the Davangere district in the Indian state of Karnataka. Karnataka is a state in South India that is known for its popular eco-tourism locations as it has over twenty-five wildlife sanctuaries and five national parks.

Tulsi Gowda's first name is directly linked with nature and is derived from the Hindu word Tulsi or Tulasi and means Holy Basil, a sacred plant within the Hindu religion. Holy Basil, tulsi, is regarded in the Hindu religion as the earliest manifestation of the goddess Tulsi and many Hindu families do not consider their home complete without a holy basil plant for worship.

Gowda was born into an impoverished family, and her father died when she was only 2, causing her to have to begin working alongside her mother as a day laborer at a local nursery once she was old enough, prohibiting her from ever receiving a formal education. As a result of her lack of education, she is illiterate, not able to read or write. The language of her tribe is Kannada, less commonly known as Kanarese,. At a young age she was married off to an older man named Govinde Gowda, but no one including her knows exactly how old she was when the marriage began, but she was estimated to be around 10 to 12 years old. Her husband died when Gowda was in her 50s. At the nursery, Gowda was responsible for taking care of the seeds that were to be grown and harvested at the Karnataka Forestry Department, and she specifically cared for the seeds that were meant to be a part of the Agasur seedbed. Gowda continued working at the nursery alongside her mother as a daily wage worker for 35 years until she was offered a permanent position in recognition of her work towards conservation and extensive knowledge of botany. She then worked at the nursery with her permanent position for 15 more years before she decided to finally retire at 70 years old. During her entire time at this nursery, she contributed and worked directly to combat afforestation efforts by the forest department by using her traditional knowledge of the land that she gained through first-hand experience.

Career and Awards
In addition to her extensive tenure at the Karnataka Forestry Department, Tulsi has received numerous awards and recognition for her work in seed development and conservation. In 1986, she received the Indira Priyadarshini Vrikshamitra Award, also known as the IPVM award. The IPVM award recognizes pioneering and innovative contributions made by individuals or institutions in the field of afforestation and wasteland development. The IPVM was founded in 1986 by the Ministry of Environment and Forests and is awarded to people in only 7 different categories every year.

In 1999, Tulsi Gowda received the Karnataka Rajyotsava Award, sometimes known as the Kannada Rayjotsava Award, and it is the “second highest civilian honor of the Karnataka state of India”. The Karnataka Rajyotsava award is given yearly to citizens over 60 of Karnataka State who are distinguished in their respective fields. In 1999, Tulsi Gowda was 1 of 68 people to recieve this award and she was 1 of 2 people to receive it for contributions to the environment. The award recipients often receive a gold medal and 1 million rupees.

Most recently on January 26th, 2020, the Government of India rewarded Tulasi Gowda with the prestigious Padma Shri award, the fourth highest award given to citizens of India. The Padma Shri, also commonly spelled as Padma Shree, is an award given every year on India's Republic Day by the Government of India. After winning the award, Tulsi reaffirmed her purpose for her actions by saying that while she is glad to have received the Padma Shri, she “values the forests and trees more”.

Karnataka Forestry Department
Tulasi Gowda spent over 50 years as both a daily wage worker and as a permanent worker at the Karnataka Forest Department. The Karnataka Forestry Department is composed of five tiger reserves, thirty wildlife sanctuaries, fifteen conservation reserves, and one community reserve, and they describe their main goal as reconnecting communities and villages back with nature. The Department envisions a future where one third of the area of the state has forest or tree cover.

Knowledge
Tulsi Gowda is known by environmentalists as the "encyclopedia of the forest" and by her tribe as the "tree goddess" because of her extensive knowledge of forest and all of the plants that grow within it. She is renowned for her ability to identify the mother tree of every species of tree in the forest no matter its location. Mother trees are significant because of their age and size which make them the most connected nodes in the forest. These underground nodes are used to connect mother trees with saplings and seedlings as the mother tree exchanges nitrogen and nutrients. Tulsi Gowda is also a master of seed collecting. Seed collecting is the extraction of seeds from mother trees in order to regenerate and regrow entire plant species. It is a very difficult process as the seeds must be collected at the peak of germination from the mother tree in order to ensure the survival of the seedlings, and Gowda is able to decipher exactly when this time is. This extraction of seeds is particularly useful within the Karnataka Forestry Department as they describe their 4 main goals as "regulatory, protection, conservation, and sustainable management."

It is widely questioned how Tulsi Gowda gathered her knowledge of the forest. When asked about it she says that she can not explain how but it is as if she can "speak the language of the forest." It is also worth noting that her tribe, the Halakki Vokkaliga, have a deeply rooted heritage where the matriarchy is connected to nature and are in charge of caring for the land.

Legacy
Tulsi is estimated to have planted in the range of one lakh (100,000) trees in Karnataka on her own. These contributions have made a lasting impact on the members of her community as well. Nagaraja Gowda of Uttara Kannada District, who works for the welfare of the Halakki tribe, says Tulsi is the pride of their community stating "she has invaluable knowledge of the forest and medicinal plants. Nobody has documented it and she is not a good communicator, so it is difficult to understand her contribution unless you’ve seen her work.”

Yellappa Reddy, a retired officer, also commends Gowda's lasting commitment to her community, citing the fact that Gowda has planted and identified over 300 medicinal plants that have since been used to treat ailments within their village.

Although Tulsi Gowda has retired from the Karnataka Forestry Department, she has dedicated the rest of her life to teaching the children of her village about the importance of the forest as well as how to find and care for seeds.

Outside of environmentalism, Tulsi Gowda has also championed for women's rights within her village. When another Halakki woman was threatened with a gun after an altercation, Gowda came to her aid stating that she will "protest fiercely if the perpetrator of the crime isn't punished."