Ramachandra Appari, founder director, Green Morning Horticulture Pvt Ltd, one of the agencies empanelled by the Forest Department for transplantation, said, “Proper research will have to be done on why some trees are dying.(file)Changes in the Tree Transplantation Policy or an additional set of guidelines to streamline the process is likely to be developed.
C. D. Singh, Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (PCCF), Forest Department, Delhi, said, “We are working in this direction. A meeting has recently been called, which will be chaired by the Minister, and where the nitty-gritty will be decided and then we will come out with an amendment in the policy, or guidelines, whatever form the government may think fit.”
Singh pointed to maintenance of transplanted trees as a key issue that needs to be addressed. “We will discuss the shortcomings, the experience we have gained in the past two years, and accordingly we will take steps. We have to fix a maintenance clause. If the user agency is maintaining (the transplanted trees), they have to be serious and they must be accountable for maintaining the trees,” he said.
On the maintenance of transplanted trees, the policy states: “The responsibility of the technical agency in charge of transplantation will be limited to one year of the completion of tree transplantation to a new site, subject to the following: (a) Survival assessment report shall be submitted by the technical agency at the end of one year with an assessment of tree survival rate at the new sites (b) The benchmark tree survival rate at the end of one year of tree transplantation shall be 80% or as notified by the Department, from time to time.”
Of about 16,461 trees that were transplanted in Delhi in the past three years, only 33.33% have survived so far, according to data submitted before the Delhi High Court in an affidavit by the Forest Department in May this year.
“What most project proponents do is that they engage a contractor, and they assign them the work of pruning the tree and getting it transplanted. This is a process that takes around six to seven months. They transplant the tree, then take care of it for four to five months. After that nobody takes care of it,” Singh said, adding that post transplantation maintenance is necessary for a minimum of 18 months.
Ramachandra Appari, founder director, Green Morning Horticulture Pvt Ltd, one of the agencies empanelled by the Forest Department for transplantation, said, “Proper research will have to be done on why some trees are dying. Transplantation is not very popular in India. With trial and error, we have been figuring it out. When research is done, standard operating procedures can be developed. Now no SOP is available because we are still in trial-and-error mode.”
He added: “Our challenge now is the timeline. We have divided species into three categories – those that are easy to transplant, those that respond moderately to transplantation, and those that are difficult to transplant. These difficult to transplant species require time and effort, like neem that doesn’t respond well. There’s a process where it takes three months to transplant a tree. The project period is two years, and within that, we need to fit in three months of transplantation. The civil contractors are not able to wait for three months, and they don’t give us proper time.”