Ramanathapuram: A day after the Madurai Branch of the Madras High Court appointed advocate commissioners to monitor weeding out of ‘seemai karuvelam’ (Prosopis juliflora) trees in 13 districts, Ramanathapuram district administration served ultimatum to private landowners to remove the invasive species on their own or pay double the cost to the government.
In a press release issued here on Wednesday, Collector S. Natarajan called upon the people to uproot the trees grown on their lands, realising their harmful nature, failing which the government would remove them and collect double the cost from the landowners.
Officials started issuing notices to private landowners to remove the trees, and the district administration started mobilising machinery and manpower to remove the trees from government lands. “The removal of trees will go on in full swing from Thursday,” official sources said.
Nearly 60,000 hectares of the total 4.08 lakh geographical area of Ramanathapuram district were infested with seemai karuvelam. Nearly 40,000 hectares of lands, infested with the trees, were patta lands, the sources said.
Ahead of the North-east monsoon last year, the district administration had removed the trees from 240 ‘kanmais’ (waterbodies) covering a total area of 4,523.15 hectares and supply channels running to a length of 762.54 km. Water, however, could not be stored due to monsoon failure, they said.
After the High Court passed an order in December last to remove the trees in the district headquarters, the district administration had removed the trees on 100 acres under Ramanathapuram municipal limits.
The Big Tank, which was located outside the municipal limits, had an area of 1,448 hectares and only 200 hectares of it were infested with seemai karuvelam, the sources said.
Nearly 1,000 hectares of the catchment area of the tank were patta lands and about 300 hectares constituted a bird sanctuary. “We have started removing the trees from the tank,” the sources said.
Unlike in other districts, here the district administration had to approach the issue humanely as the poor and the downtrodden depended on the trees to eke out a living. Farm workers, whenever crops failed, cut the trees to sell the wood as firewood or make ‘karimoottam’ (charcoal making) for their livelihood, they added.
