Trees are an inevitable casualty in the process of urbanisation but that does not mean we should treat them casually. Our infrastructure authorities seem to treat trees like lamp posts which can be shifted overnight. It is easy to say that ten saplings were planted to compensate for the felling of a tree but the survival rate of such saplings is five per cent because having met the statutory requirement no one looks at them. And even those which survive need 20 years to grow into maturity during which time they have to be pruned and protected from pests. Trees don’t grow on money, they need tender loving care. This preface is necessitated by the slew of housing and infrastructure projects being carried out in and around cities. While the projects get acres of coverage, news about the loss of tree cover is dispersed. Last week there were several unconnected news items about trees that make sense when read together. Nearly 3.1 million trees were cut down for public infrastructure projects across India in 2020-21, Union Minister Bhupender Yadav told the Lok Sabha. The CAG said that only 54 per cent of the trees transplanted by the BMC have survived, which was well below the national average of 80 per cent. The Mumbai Climate Action Plan says that between 2016 and 2021, Mumbai lost 2,028 hectares of urban tree cover which is equal to the size of about one-and-a-half Aarey Milk Colony. While urban foliage is depleted in development, the challenge is to minimize the loss. Every effort must be made to save a tree.
Tree activist Zoru Bhathena says that in many cases, trees that are not affected by a project are also felled. Then, it is vital to transplant all these trees to ensure a better survival rate for them. The choice of trees is also important. The preponderance of exotic varieties such as the Peltophorum, Gulmohar, and rain tree is leading to an ecological imbalance in Mumbai. According to `The Trees of Mumbai,' published by the BNHS, exotic species planted for ornamental purposes account for half of Mumbai’s tree diversity of 318 species. People have forgotten what Indian flowering trees look like. There’s the Pride-of-India (Lagerstroemia speciosa), Palash (Butea monosperma), also known as Flame of the Forest, the evergreen Bakul (Mimusops elengi) with fragrant flowers, and the Karanj (Millettia pinnata) with its white and purple flowers. The delicate violet flower of the Pride-of-India (`Tamhan’ in Marathi) is the state flower of Maharashtra but how many such trees does one see at Mantralaya or the Vidhan Sabha or even in parks and posh housing complexes? So, it was heartening to read about the planting of 7,000 native Indian trees for a Miyawaki forest in 1,800 sq. mt. plot in Bala Guste garden in Versova. We can’t just plant trees and forget them. A positive development last week was the news that BMC has said it would consult residents of Dadar Parsi colony before renovating footpaths as roots have been damaged by the contractor. We are being slowly sensitized to the importance of trees which can bring down the temperature in a locality by as much as five to six degrees centigrade by acting as natural air-conditioners. Besides, they also trap dust which is one of the major air pollutants. In western countries, not only the streets are washed at night, the trees too are cleaned using a jet spray.
One can also take the CAG’s advice of using a`tree spade,' a specialised machine that mechanizes the transplanting of large plants, instead of going about it in a primitive way. We can take a leaf from Central Melbourne, a small municipality in the center of the Greater Melbourne Metropolitan area, which has its own online treemap. Called the Urban Forest Visual, the map displays each of the 80,000 trees in its parks and streets, and shows each tree’s age, species, and health. It also gives each tree its own email address so that people can help to monitor them and alert council workers to any specific problems. The latest news that shows the challenges faced in maintaining a balance between development and the environment is the report of the chief conservator of forests (CCF), Thane, which says that only 51 out of the 18,073 trees that are proposed to be felled on notified forest land in Palghar district to make way for the Mumbai-Vadodara Expressway (MVE) link between Talasari and Vasai are feasible for transplantation.
According to the forest department, the terrain is rocky and hilly, many of the trees have already been harvested for timber and will likely not survive even if they are moved elsewhere. Also, bigger trees of over 60cm girth are mixed in with a dense cover of smaller girth trees, which makes selective transplantation hard. The Union Environment Ministry has now constituted an independent, three-member sub-committee to conduct a ground-truthing exercise and verify if a larger number of trees can be transplanted or protected from felling.
Given the reality, it is imperative that we pay serious attention to trees and urban greenery. Otherwise, we will be left with no option but to plant trees on our terraces, as indeed has been mandated for all new construction in Mumbai.
