The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court on Monday directed the Centre to file an affidavit on a petition seeking to curb the growth of invasive trees in the Western Ghats and for the removal of such trees.
A Division Bench of Justices M.M. Sundresh and N. Sathish Kumar sought to know the steps that could be taken to maintain the Western Ghats and also sought information on whether people could be recruited specifically for maintaining and monitoring the ghats. The court adjourned the case by two weeks.
The Centre earlier submitted that steps had already been initiated for the removal of these trees. The State, in its submission, said that it had sent a proposal to the Standing Committee of the National Board for Wildlife for the removal of the invasive species from the Shola forests. Steps had also been initiated to plant native trees in the place of the commercially exotic trees, it said, and added that close to 1,000 people would be recruited for the anti-poaching squad.
The petitioner, M. Saravanan of Madurai, complained that wattle, acacia and eucalyptus had swallowed up to 22,000 hectares of the Shola forests. These exotic trees left very little space between them for wildlife to move freely. He added that these trees had dried up water bodies in the forests.
The court also sought an affidavit from the State in the case that sought a direction to raise the height of power lines within the reserve forests.
