Green thumb spruces up B’desh one tree at a time

Hossen Sohel of DOT
Ohid Sarder prises a rusted nail from a tree and drops it into his bucket, another eyesore scrubbed from the countryside as he embarks on a one-man mission to clean up Bangladesh, reports AFP.
The 53-year-old self-professed tree hugger has been riding his bicycle across the country, in a grassroots effort to free trees of the billboards and clutter nailed to their trunks.
Trees in Bangladesh are often used as free advertising space, with every available inch of wood plastered with placards until the trunk is barely visible.
“Trees have life. They feel pain just as we do,” the self-styled conservationist told AFP in Jessore district in the country’s southwest.
“I have seen how these nails have killed trees, and how they are causing them pain.”
Sarder grew up idolising Jagdish Chandra Bose, a prominent Bengali botanist who wrote about the emotions of plants in the early decades of the 20th century.