After making a point to the municipal authorities in the capital by showcasing that trees, young or old, can be relocated successfully without the need to chop them off, the city-based voluntary agency - Vata Foundation, is now involved in moving trees on the State highway at Bhupalpally.
Twenty-two trees on the roadside were in the danger of being cut for the proposed widening of the road between Mulugu-Buddaram stretch in order to provide faster access to the newly-formed Bhupalpally district headquarters from the hinterlands by the Roads & Buildings Department.
In a refreshing initiative, District R&B Officer T. D. Anand Rao and his engineering colleagues - B. Kumaraswamy and L. Rajan instead of going ahead with the cutting job decided to save them and contacted the foundation trustee Udaykrishna Peddireddi and wondered if he could help in translocating the trees.
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Volunteering for the work, he and his team did a recce and decided to seek a 80-tonne crane for lifting the trees and placing them in the alternate site nearby. For the last couple of days the crane has been helping in uprooting the trees and than planting them again carefully.
“Since we were not transporting the trees to long distances we did not require trucks to carry them but the size of trees was such that we needed to requisition a higher capacity crane,” explains Mr. Udaykrishna. He along with his band of three volunteers have managed to translocate up to eight trees and hope to complete the exercise by tomorrow.
“Our philosophy is any tree can be moved and when provided with certain minimal facilities it will survive which is much better than chopping them off and later planting saplings as an alternative,” he points out. The department had spent ₹6.4 lakh for the purpose.
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Vata Foundation had earlier taken part in relocating more than 100 trees from Kukatpally Housing Board, about to be cut.