With 4k tweets & 11k signatures, Delhi-Mussoorie road widening stir goes online

Dehradun: With 4,300 tweets in two hours and nearly 11,300 signatures on an online petition, environmentalists and Dehradun citizens on Sunday put the spotlight on a plan to chop off over 2,200 trees on a 14-km stretch in Dehradun for the expansion of a two-lane toad from Delhi to Mussoorie.
At 5pm, tweets with the hashtags #savesahastradharatrees, #save2200treesofsahastradhara and #savedehradun flooded local Twitter.By 7pm, at least 4,300 tweets had voiced concerns about the project with the hashtag #savesahastradharatrees, tagging chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami. Many cited TOI’s story on over 2,000 trees being axed for faster commute to Mussoorie. Several others tagged TOI’s stories on Uttarakhand losing 50,000 hectares of forest cover in 20 years and Uttarakhand being among the top three most polluted Himalayan states.
Bollywood actor Archana Puran Singh, who was born in Dehradun, took the lead, kicking things off with a series of 50 tweets and retweets. “Save the trees on Sahastradhara road in the beautiful Dehradun valley. Between 5 and 7 pm TODAY PLEASE use your power to stop 2200 old trees being cut down. Tweet using hashtags #SaveSahastradharaTrees #Save2200TreesOfShastradhara,” her first tweet said.
With a show of numbers, environmental organisations like local units of global environment NGO Fridays For Future (an international movement of school students started by Greta Thunberg), The Earth and Climate Initiative, Do Not Trash, Citizens for Green Doon, The Friends of The Doon Society, Rajpur Community Initiative, IDEAL, Titli Trust, Pramukh, MAD by BTD and Aagas hope to convince the government to drop the plan. TOI had reported that the Centre has approved the project and sanctioned Rs 77 crore for it, allowing over 2,000 eucalyptus, mango, peepal and other trees to be chopped. “These trees have braved the storms and floods of Doon valley. The officials are wrong in calling them mature trees ready for felling. They are in very good condition. We have inspected the site,” said Dr Aanchal Sharma, founder of The Earth and Climate Initiative. “These trees are home to several birds and if the trees are gone, the birds will too.”
Besides, it would cause immense ecological damage, Sharma explained. “Dehradun is a valley. If trees are uprooted, we will get submerged in floods,” she said. “The ecology of a valley should be left untouched.”