In an open letter to Karnataka Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy, Justice Michael F Saldanha (retd), who is now an environmentalist, demanded the government to wake up before Kodagu, the catchment area of the Cauvery River, is lost forever.

In the letter, he said he was totally horrified to see the amount of devastation in the Cauvery basin. With huge areas today completely denuded due to the felling of crores of trees, Justice Saldanha has put the blame on the forest department.

According to his enquiries, he wrote that this has happened in collusion with the forest department and the Kerala timber mafia. 'Kerala timber mafia induce the estate owners and the government officials, discriminately fell the tress and transport the timber to Kerala,' he wrote.

Since every tree harbours a lot of life from birds to bees and the like, he said that when a tree is mercilessly chopped down, all of this life is killed because this form of life is territorial and it cannot shift or migrate to another tree or area. He added that ecological damage is immense and the world today is fighting furiously to replace whatever has been lost.

"The experts have pointed out that unless all this green cover is immediately replaced, it will totally destroy the Cauvery basin," he wrote.

His other focus was on the decreasing storage capacity in the catchment areas due to lakhs of tonnes of soil polluting the waters and moving into these areas due to lack of green cover. "It is necessary that the government sets up a high level committee to examine this issue and that immediate corrective action is taken."

Dwelling on the issue where trees were cut so as to not obstruct the speed of the CM's convoy when he visited Kodagu recently, he wrote, "The citizens of the state are entitled to demand that your government passes an order which must be publicly promulgated that no trees will be cut anywhere in the state to facilitate VIP movements."