Hyderabad: The irony of Telangana now is the ‘harithaharam’ and simultaneous cutting down of trees for various development projects. As multiple seedlings and saplings are being planted across the city, there has been an onslaught on the mature trees that have survived these years.
“Every three to four years the trees are getting cut for one project or the other,” noted Mr Uday Krishna of Vata Foundation. He elaborates that the city may have a rising number of new saplings and seeds but the number of full grown mature trees is shrinking. Without these full grown trees, the city’s pollution absorption capacity would be dramatically reduced.
“When a tree is cut from a place the oxygen levels that the surrounding areas were habituated to, drastically fall,” says Ms Kalyani, a researcher from the JNTU on environment. She adds that that a mature tree performs pollution control of up to 62,000$ in its lifetime which saplings wouldn’t be able to do immediately.
The city has already seen a loss of green cover across the 73-kilometer Metro rail work, and experts point that the landscape plantation wouldn’t be able to bring them back.
“You kill trees that have fought and won and plant new ones which have a long battle to fight. What’s more problematic is that the ‘natives’ are removed and replaced with ‘exotics’ like copper pods and gulmohar which will be less useful,” says Mr Mathen Mathew a wildlife consultant.
The shock of the loss of habitat also affects the many organisms inhabiting on the trees.
“It is an overnight removal of food source and the homes of the birds and animals. Their biological clock is tampered. Imagine a bat returning to not find its home in the night. It is like a tsunami striking,” Mr Mathen adds.
The case of the LB Nagar tree killing highlights the irony of the investments made in these plantation drives. “Many of the plants which were are marked for killing in LB Nagar were planted by the HMR,” says Mr Uday. Such killings have only wasted previous funds.
In the most recent case, multiple trees have been marked for killing under the SDRP projects taking place at Kukatpally, Biodiversity Junction, LB Nagar and KBR park.
