The Capital’s Greens Are in the Red as Never Before

Following is a News story from the online edition of The Hindu

The Capital’s greens are in the red as never before

BINDU SHAJAN PERAPPADAN

NEW DELHI: Cutting down healthy and unmarked trees, damaging others by exposing their roots or attacking their barks and not managing to re-locate large trees, Delhi’s greens probably were never so severely under threat as now, reveals a new tree audit conducted this month to assess the state of greens in the Capital in the wake of ongoing and planned development works.

Details of the audit inspection, conducted during the second week of this month, would be submitted to Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit soon to demand immediate action for protection of the Capital’s green cover.The audit points to discrepancies between the Government’s tree map and ground realities relating to the number of trees affected and says that of the 688 to-be-audited trees mentioned in official records submitted by the Indian Institute of Technology, 102 are to be felled and 347 to be transplanted, while the others would remain unaffected.

Auditing the trees on stretches such as Press Enclave and Chiragh Dilli (both sides and central verge), Madangir Press Enclave Road (left side and central verge) and Lal Bahadur Shastri Marg, the auditors were able to locate only 38 per cent of the total trees mentioned in the official records and many of these were marked for felling or transplanted.

“Of the trees that we were able to locate, 30 per cent were classified as `unaffected’ but were already cut.

Of the remaining marked unaffected, 77 per cent were severely threatened and would die soon as they were surrounded by tar, the roots were exposed and their barks damaged.The condition of the transplanted trees was not good as most of them were planted without their roots and none had any branches”, states the audit report. 

The article can be read on its source website by clicking here.

DG Correspondent

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