NEW DELHI: Though Delhi high court recently observed that the capital was fast losing its forest cover and asked the additional solicitor general to personally look into the matter, any remedial step has to take into account two factors: that there is, according to forest officials, not enough space in the city for planting trees and the Delhi government assertion that the capital has a higher per capita green cover than other mega cities.In the high court, the bench of chief justice Satish Chandra Sharma and justice Subramonium Prasad noted the problem about construction and encroachment in the Ridge. Around 319 hectares of Delhi’s reserve forest area were under encroachment till September last year.According to the Forest Survey of India (FSI) report of January 2022, for the first time in a decade, Delhi lost forest cover by less than half a square kilometre. The report, published every alternate year, said that Delhi lost 0.44 sq km of forest cover between 2019 and 2022.Despite this loss, Delhi, with 9.6 sq m of forest cover per citizen, has the highest per capita forest cover among India’s mega cities, claims the state government. The forest department also said that while a part of the reserve forest was indeed lost, mainly due to infra and development projects, there has been an increase in the tree cover outside the forest areas.“While the felled tree cover or canopy density is lost overnight for construction of highways, government buildings, metro lines, etc, and this loss is recorded by the satellites, the compensatory afforestation takes four-five years to reflected in the green cover,” the official, adding, “Since a lot of trees were felled in the last few years, the compensatory afforestation will take time to show on satellite images. It is likely, therefore, that the next FSI report, which will consider green cover in 2023, will also show a drop in Delhi’s forest area. In 2025, however, there might be an increase.”The official also explained that forest cover comprises very dense, dense or open forests, part of which could be a planted area of more than one hectare. Tree cover outside of the forest area could be groups of trees, avenue plantations, even a single tree. According to a report filed in Delhi High Court in 2022, the forest department permitted the felling of 77,000 trees for developmental work between 2019 and 2022. Afforestation aside, many trees were also transplanted, but state government data showed that only 41% of over 8,500 trees transplanted between April and September in 2022 survived, while only 33.3% of trees transplanted in the last three years continued to live.If a stand of trees came in the way of a development project, the forest official said, they were felled and afforestation or transplantation done elsewhere but the success of transplantation was subject to several factors.In 2022-23, the city targeted planting over 31 lakh saplings, of which only seven lakhs were trees or canopy trees, the rest being shrubs. “Delhi doesn’t have enough land to plant more canopy trees, barring on land meant for afforestation,” claimed a forest official.
Source: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/why-delhi-forests-are-going-bald-felling-poor-transplantation-slow-afforestation/articleshow/97588293.cms