Sanjay Talekar is a watchman with an unusual duty. He guards over 80,000 small and mid-sized trees - khair, neem, palash, lal sawar, shisam, awla, ritha, teak, ber - spread on hilly slopes over the 80 hectares located between the Palashi and Mirje villages of Satara district.

Talekar, an employee of Naoroji Godrej Centre for Plant Research (NGCPR), has been a witness to the growth of the trees from the time they were seeded in 2011, as part of a first-of-its-kind seven-year afforestation initiative in collaboration with the state forest department and Pune-based non-governmental group Maharashtra Vriksha Samvardhini. His duty as a guard is coming to a close this month as the centre hands over 80,000 trees - which have taken root amid cattle grazing, forest fires and poachers eyeing the bamboo and other fruit bearing vegetation - to the forest department.