Over 5k trees felled in Noida in last 5 yrs; can’t stop infra work, says DFO

Noida: While the city's deteriorating air quality over the past few years has emerged as a major concern for Noida, its fast-depleting urban green cover has only compounded the problems. At least 5,330 trees were felled across the city over the past five years, whereas 13,571 trees were chopped down for various development projects in Ghaziabad, forest department data showed.

However, environmentalists alleged that these are merely what is on official record, approved by the forest department for different development projects, and that the numbers are much higher on the ground.

“We can't stop the development activities which often demand chopping of trees. But we always try to limit the numbers and, in exchange, double or triple the trees are planted. So far, we have achieved a 75% survival chance of the plants that we have planted in Noida,” said district forest officer Pramod Srivastav.

According to the DFO, only around 2,500 trees have been felled for the Noida International Airport so far.

In Ghaziabad, most of the trees felled over the last five years were for the widening of the Delhi-Meerut expressway. However, more than 33,000 fully grown trees are proposed to be cut for the 111km Kanwar route project spanning Ghaziabad, Meerut and Muzaffarnagar.

As per the latest report of the forest survey of India from 2021, the forest cover has remained unchanged in both districts since the previous assessment in 2019.

Gautam Budh Nagar has a total geographic area of 1,282 sqkm, of which the forest cover is only 20 sqkm – around 1.56% of the total area. Similarly, Ghaziabad has a total geographic area of 1,179 sqkm, of which the forest cover makes up around 2.14% at 25.22 sqkm.

Data shows that neither of the districts have seen any significant increase in the forest cover since the assessments carried out in 2019. On the other hand, Ghaziabad had seen a 0.78% decline in forest cover in 2019, as compared to that in 2017.

Officials from the forest department said that while many trees have been felled for infrastructure projects in the last few years, efforts are on to increase the area covered under plantation drives.

As per reports shared by officials, the two districts have collectively planted around 8 lakh saplings through such plantation drives in the last five years.

Environmentalists, however, question the validity of these numbers and ask why, if plantation is being done on such a large scale, the green cover of the districts has remained largely unchanged.

City-based environmentalist Dr Pranab J Patar said, “Despite having various policy frameworks to ensure minimum green cover in cities and urban areas, very little has been achieved so far. WHO recommends that there should be 50sqm of green cover per person. However, I wonder in today’s context how much of it is possible in the developing world. One of the common problems is, the popular plantation drives don’t factor provisions for maintenance and upkeep of trees they plant.”