A Guest Blog Post by Times of India, Westside Plus’ Nita Deb.
Did you know that the fullgrown trees down your lane, could fetch a cool two hundred thousand Indian, yes, that’s - INR 200,000 - each - for their wood?
I am really livid that these beautiful, peaceful living beings who are older than our grandfathers and who reduce the Carbon Dioxide content in the air, are being cut and sold for money. The amount could be shared by everybody involved, the BMC, your watchman, your society garbage collector. These trees are protected under law but most of them are cut either sans any sort of by-your-leave-your-honour or murdered in cold blood under flimsy excuses such as roadwidening, causing obstruction to traffic or simply, in the name of that great carrot dangled in front of our unquestioning, unsuspecting noses, “development”. Most of them end up feeding the fire at Chandanwadi and similar places.
Leaving empty holes on the pavements.
And in the ozone layer.
Currently, the BMC is planning to cut the 3,173 big and beautiful trees at the Virmata Jijabai Udyan in Byculla.
For those of you who don’t know the place, it’s the 53-acre Botanical Garden and Zoo in the heart of Bombay city, India (yes, it houses a few animals in not-so-wonderful conditions, but it also has trees, planted a century and a half ago, that are doing extremely well - currently…).
Plans are afoot to convert this heritage greenery into concrete, to build a nature education centre after destroying half the nature in the area. Somebody even mentioned destroying the current trees and recreating them in plastic so children can climb them and study them. Wonderful. Why can’t they climb real trees? Or do we want to teach our impressionable future generation that plastic trees are more fun than real ones…??!!
If you want to stop this, go to ‘Save Ranibagh‘ and sign the online petition!
It doesn’t matter if you don’t live here in Bombay and never will - the ozone layer that we destroy is common to us all.
Tags: Byculla, Byculla-Zoo, India, Mumbai, Ozone-Layer, Ranibagh, Trees, Virmata-Jijabai-Udyan, Wood
; ?>/feed-icon-24x24.png){kind=icon}
August 24th, 2007 at 1:43 pm
What I cannot understand, is that if a site is deemed “HERITAGE” (whether zoo or tree or Church or Agiary) how can anyone suddenly decide to destroy it based on - as you point out - flimsy excuses of road widening etc?
And the excuse for cutting down this particular set of trees is REALLY ridiculous!! What… cut down trees to build a “nature center”??? If they were really so concerned about nature, they wouldn’t be doing this in the first place.
Incidentally, had signed the petition a while back. Hope more people do the same & hope it does indeed make a difference.
August 24th, 2007 at 4:46 pm
@ mel
thanks so much for your support. yes, it is extremely important that we preserve our heritage - there is nothing if we don’t have that.
the zoo petition has already got over 2100 signatures already - but hope to get much more support from young people like you. this is just the first in a long line of issues related to nature - and our environment - which i intend to take up. as a mother, i don’t want my child to grow up not knowing how good it feels to run barefoot on a wide expanse of grass, to swing from a tree, to enjoy a picnic in its shade, to swim in a clean sea on a clean beach….and i realised that i must do something about it if i feel strongly enough, just sitting and fuming will not help. would love to hear everybody’s comments on this…and hope to help make a better world for all of us.
August 26th, 2007 at 4:21 pm
They are a planning to do something similar in Dehradun too, but the government terms it as “Development” or “Raod Widening”… Rajpur Road has recently constructed sidewalk, a couple of meters away from the main road. Most likely they would be cutting down at least 600 - 700 trees to widen the road.
It is a very sad state of affairs…
August 26th, 2007 at 10:22 pm
Don’t know about Mumbai, but Pune’s character is certainly changing with the felling of trees. One of the things that initially attracter me here, was the quaint hill-station ambience highlighted by the large number of banyan trees (which grow over several decades). Unfortunately, the cost of sudden growth due to the explosion of IT and other industries in Pune means roads being widened, trees being cut, and a depleting green cover.
August 27th, 2007 at 7:00 am
If there is anything that has a remote chance of improving Mumbai’s quality of air, it is trees. Only myopic and/or money-hungry people can make these decisions lightly and it is up to every educated and far-sighted person to speak up and oppose any tree-cutting that isn’t absolutely necessary.
August 29th, 2007 at 11:58 am
Jeez!!! when will they learn???
nature education park can also be built without damaging that many greenery!!
These ppl can take a leaf out some other smaller cities, where they ahve done teh same thing and still have nature intact and thriving!!
August 29th, 2007 at 6:00 pm
@moksh and @traveller: it doesn’t always have to be so. isn’t it time thinking, caring people spoke up against this, and stopped such destruction? “development” will continue to happen; but can’t it be done taking into account our need for trees and open spaces, or is all that to be sacrificed at the altar of money and greed? who benefits from all this, besides builders and politicians? how are we ever going to replace two-hundred-year old forests? once gone they are gone forever.
@ic: thanks! you know you can demand to see the permission of any guy attempting to cut a tree. and if he doesn’t have it, you can call the cops on him. a hefty fine and/or a jail term is assured. even in cases where permission has been given to cut a tree for -say, a road-widening project, the cutter has to plant 3 trees for every one cut, acc to the urban tree act of maharashtra. check out the law in your own state. let this movement grow!!!
@sam, hey, would love to hear more about these smaller cities where nature is intact and thriving. even in remote himachal, where i went for a holiday this summer, dams were drowning the countryside and concrete resorts were replacing open hillsides. mining, roadbuilding, construction, tourism, waterworks, all these might sound good on the surface but unless done in harmony with nature, is nothing short of a violent, mercenary, mindless rape of the land….
as you can see i am seething and quite likely to vent all evening on this…until mel throws me out , that is!!!
but hey people, keep your eyes open, think about acting for what you believe in, wake up and fight for what is yours.
looking forward
nita