Nagpur's green cover under threat

Here's another statistic to prompt greater care of the city's green patches. The 95 gardens and parks covering 102 hectares, maintained

by NMC and NIT, constitute just 0.5% of the city's area, while it must be 1.8% as per the Maharashtra Regional Town Planning (MRTP) Act. As expected, the ratio is going down steadily with roadside trees toppling after being choked due to tiling of footpaths and tarring of roads.

The Environment Status Report of Nagpur City (2007-08) warns that existing green cover and vegetation is not enough to sustain increasing pollution with tremendous population growth. Though Nagpur is recognized as the second greenest city of India, the tempo of tree plantation and maintaining the greenery has declined substantially.

Yet, the civic body has failed to wake up. At the speed with which roadside trees are dying in the city, conservationists give 20-25 years for most of the city's green cover to disappear. In the past four months, at least 50 trees have crashed, most of them due to concretization and tarring.

Five years ago, during then municipal commissioner T Chandra Shekhar's tenure roads were widened under the Integrated Road Development Project (IRDP). However, the tarring has led to closure of the mouths of many trees, cutting supply of water and air to the root. Now these trees are dying a slow death.

Even as trees continue to die, the issue seems to have been bogged down in NMC files and authorities have failed to do anything about it.

Even after orders were issued to rescue the choked trees, of the 10 NMC zones not one has physically started work on it. While Satranjipura Zone ward officer was not available for comment, the nine other officials admitted that work to open up mouths of choked trees has not started yet.

A N Shambarkar, chief engineer for PWD (NMC), who had issued a circular in this regard on May 14, admits, "Tiling and tarring around the trunks of trees along roadside affects them adversely by cutting off moisture to the roots and suffocating the trees by blocking root aeration. I had also asked the garden superintendent to take cognisance of the TOI reports and coordinate follow up action."

The circular was submitted to municipal commissioner Aseem Gupta. It was also forwarded to ward officers of 10 zones for necessary action. Interestingly, all the zones were asked to act before the monsoon. Shockingly, the ward officers are 'sleeping' over the issue even as the monsoon has come close to its end.

Tree officer & garden superintendent N B Shrikhande was candid in admitting that none of the 10 zones have physically started work on removing tiles and opening mouths of the choked trees. "Some have conducted surveys but not one ward officer has submitted a proposal or approached me. I will review the situation and let you know. It's true that trees are dying due to choking," he noted. Interestingly, when TOI called up the ward officers some of them were not even aware of such a circular and others said the survey was going on. Only Laxmi Nagar zone ward officer S M Jaidev said he had submitted a proposal in this regard to the garden superintendent.

The issue had first cropped up in April when a huge neem tree opposite Sandipani School, Civil Lines, crashed without any warning. After that at least 50 trees have come down, most of them due to choking.

Conservationist Kishor Rithe says choked trees, particularly large ones, need to be enclosed by a six-feet by six feet patch of wet soil so that run-off water can seep into the soil and keep it healthy. Trees on the roadside usually suffer from poor hydration. "'It's really bad that precious trees are dying slowly and NMC is doing nothing," he remarked.

P B Nandkar, HoD of botany department at Nagpur University, says, "We need to be serious. These trees die as their root system fails to get water due to choking. Trees intake air and water from the sides where water percolates into the ground. If these sides are closed, capillary water supply is cut causing slow death."