In what comes as a welcome development for environment lovers and concerned citizens, the State Government has been directed to lay down objective guidelines for declaring trees dangerous. Giving it's ruling on a petition filed by Citizens For Green Doon, a five member bench of the National Green Tribunal, New Delhi, on Tuesday directed the State Government to lay down objective guidelines for declaring a tree as "dangerous" in the proposed Uttarakhand Tree Protection Act.
According to the CFGD chief coordinator Dr Nitin Pandey, the petition filed by the group had stated that thousands of healthy green trees are felled every year in Uttarakhand after being labelled as "dangerous to life or property" incorrectly.
The petition alleged that just because a tall tree is near a building or an electricity wire, the tree is felled as dangerous. The petition had elicited focus on the need to ensure that the process of defining a tree as dangerous should be scientific and based on objective criterion rather than the subjective assessment of a forester, as is the current practice.
A checklist of such similar criterion suggested by the Forest Research Institute was also attached with the application.
The NGT bench ordered the administration to implement the objective criterion suggested by FRI. The five member bench was headed by Justice Swatanter Kumar. CFGD members have revealed on the basis of information procured from the Forest Department through the RTI that hundreds of healthy green trees have been axed in capital.