Nagpur: The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) intends to transplant hundreds of age-old trees from Central railway’s land in Ajni, a technique which has repeatedly failed in the city.
TOI has been regularly reporting about the severe environmental damage that will occur if the proposed transport hub and inter-modal station comes up at Ajni. The Rs1,288.81 crore project is coming up on land which is a thriving biodiversity habitat of bird and animal species amid thousands of trees planted during the British era.
As per documents procured under Right to Information (RTI) by senior citizen Ashish Kumar Ghosh, 1,222 trees will have to be chopped off for construction of the station. Apart from this, over 700 trees will be felled for schools, housing, health care centre, railway offices and other buildings.
In a press release on Saturday evening, NHAI stated that as per the detailed study report, 1,940 trees will be felled. It also proposed transplanting maximum number of these trees.
Calling this an eyewash, environment experts said that transplantation of said trees will not be successful. “It has been time and again proven that transplantation of trees is nothing but a failure in our region. Authorities try to fool people by using relocation of trees to make the case for projects. This is nothing but a scam,” said environment activist and former honorary wildlife warden of Nagpur Jaydeep Das.
Environment activist Anasuya Kale Chhabrani, who is also executive member of environment NGO Paryavaran Prerna Vidarbha, agreed with him. “Transplantation here is not done in the way it should be done. The city has a record of transplantation failures. Moreover, when such age-old trees with huge girth and wide spread of roots are disturbed, they will automatically die. Very few species can be scientifically transplanted.”
As reported by TOI, previous transplantation of trees carried out by MahaMetro at Patwardhan School ground in Sitabuldi, a residential colony in Mihan, and other locations has failed miserably. Not even 10 % of the trees could survive.
In its release, NHAI further stated that it will carry out compensatory afforestation of 25,000 trees on available vacant land of the agency.
However, raising doubts over this too, activists pointed out that NHAI has a bad track record of compensatory plantations. “The survival rate has been very poor,” said Chhabrani. Citing lack of space, Das said, “Authorities themselves claim there is not enough space available to plant trees. If trees are cut in Ajni and compensatory plantation is done in far-off areas, it will disturb the ecological balance.”