NEW DELHI: The New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) will launch an exercise to find out specific reasons behind loss of green cover. The civic body has lost 1,813 trees, including around 300 heritage trees, in the last six years in Lutyens’ Delhi, officials said.
Officials found that trees are uprooted because of concretisation, frequent road cutting, trench-less utilities work and termite. The exercise will focus on suggesting remedial measures to save existing trees in the region.
The officials said out of 1,813 trees, around 300 heritage trees were lost between the financial years of 2015-16 and 2021-22. “We are losing nearly 250 trees per year, which is a big number. This is a growing concern and it calls for corrective actions and efforts to ascertain reasons,” said S Chellaiah, director (horticulture) of NDMC. “We will use modern techniques and take help from experts to know all possible factors leading to the decay of trees, especially the heritage ones,” he added.
“Currently, there are around 15,000 indigenous trees that are almost a century old and need more advanced care and conservation,” Chellaiah said. According to a survey conducted by the NDMC, out of 1,813 trees, 559 were uprooted trees, 783 were dead and dry trees while 424 were cut for construction activities.
“In the NDMC area, most of the utility pipelines, wires, cables are laid underground without any trench. Roads are frequently cut to repair such utilities that damage roots which make the trees vulnerable to termites or fungal attacks,” he said.
The official added that concretised pavements hamper growth of trees, thereby compromising on the tree’s load-bearing capacity and making it prone to get uprooted. “We have to adopt a tree-centric approach and use advanced methods,” Chellaiah said.