Objection to felling trees for housing project in city

National Environment Care Foundation says site is deemed forest

Activists of the National Environment Care Foundation have tied friendship bands to trees in a forest area near Shakthinagar in Mangaluru, to prevent them from being felled for a housing project.

Mangaluru City Corporation’s move to construct an apartment for urban poor at Padavu village near Shakthinagar under the Ashraya scheme has landed in controversy with environmental activists opposing it on the grounds that several trees would have to be cut for the project as it has been planned in what they said a deemed forest.

But a senior Forest Department official said that the site identified for the project is not a deemed forest.

According to Shashidhar Shetty, Secretary, National Environment Care Foundation (NECF), a registered body, even before the project coming to a shape, several trees on about two acres of the nine acres of deemed forest were cut about three months ago. There is no clarity on who cut down the trees.

Mr. Shetty told a visiting team of media persons at the site on Tuesday that according to a Supreme Court verdict the permission of the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change would have to be obtained for felling any tree in a deemed forest or to take up any other work. But the city corporation is going ahead with the project without clearance from the Union government.

He showed reporters some trees that have been cut but not been lifted. Reporters also saw numbers marked on some trees for felling.

Mr. Shetty said that after a NECF activist learnt about transportation of logs from the site three months ago, the activist tipped the Forest Department. According to the officials, they have seized three lorry loads of logs being transported from the site and have registered a case as the department has not given permission to anyone to fell trees on the site. However, Mr. Shetty quoting some local people as saying said that more than 25 lorry loads of logs have been transported from the site after the trees were felled.

Mr. Shetty said that even three months after seizing the logs the Forest Department has not filed a charge-sheet and was still saying that it is inquiring into it.

He said that the activists tied friendship bands on August 5 to save the remaining trees. They also planted more than 350 saplings on the site to replace the trees cut by “some unknown persons”.

Mr. Shetty said that NECF would file a case against the Forest Department if more trees were allowed to be cut on the site. He said that the activists would protest against officials responsible for trees being felled in future.