Ghaziabad, Gautam Budh Nagar surpass plantation targets during August 9 drive
The Gautam Budh Nagar and Ghaziabad districts surpassed their respective targets during the mega plantation drive on August 9. The plantations were taken up by different government departments along with private associations and groups.
In Gautam Budh Nagar, officials said over 10,67,992 saplings were planted against the assigned target of 7.5 lakh. The plantations were taken up at around 1,421 locations and involved 27 departments. Besides RWAs, industrial units and institutes, agencies like the Noida authority also participated in the drive. The authority planted over 2,55,289 saplings at 25 different locations in the city.
The forest departments said participation by farmers also helped in planting more saplings than the target assigned by the state government.
“Farmers played an important role as they planted saplings in their fields and around the canals,” PK Srivastava, divisional forest officer, Gautam Budh Nagar, said.
The administration also planted about 8,500 plants on 2,500 square metres of land using the Japanese Miyawaki afforestation method at the district magistrate’s office in Surajpur, Greater Noida. The method, which is 100% organic, usually uses only 25% of the water required otherwise and leads to faster growth of a forest system that includes large or canopy trees, general trees, sub-trees and shrubs.
“The plantation drive was a huge success as part of the statewide initiative. People should now take care of trees that they have planted,” BN Singh, district magistrate, said.
In Ghaziabad, 26 different departments took part in the mega plantation drive. The UP government had set the target of planting 22 crore trees in the state and out of this 8,15,725 trees were supposed to be planted in Ghaziabad district.
The forest department officials said that by Friday evening, over 9,57,517 trees were planted in the district which was about 117% of the target to them by the state government. The officials, with the help of the 26 different government departments, planted large canopy trees like Sheesham, Jamun, Imli, Neem, Peepal, Banyan among others in order to increase the canopy cover.
“The plantation drive was taken up across the district on the pattern of elections. Different officers were assigned to different areas for plantation. Now the departments will have to take care of watering the new saplings. We will also start geo-tagging the plantation areas so that their growth can be monitored,” Diksha Bhandari, divisional forest officer(Ghaziabad), said.
The departments and agencies that took part in the plantation drive included Ghaziabad development authority, municipal corporation, Ghaziabad police, basic and secondary education and Public Works Department among others.
“We had started planting the spalings a week ago. About 50,000 trees were planted. The rest of the tress under the target assigned to GDA was achieved during the drive on August 9,” Kanchan Verma, authority’s vice-chairperson, said.
According to 2017 Forest Survey of India, State of forest – 2017 report, the forest cover in Ghaziabad district stood at 2.21% of its geographical area. In the 2015 survey report, the forest cover of the district stood at 1.89% of its total geographical area.
The ‘forest cover’ includes all lands, more than one hectare in area, with a tree canopy density of more than 10 percent. Such lands may not be statutorily notified as forest area.
Source : Hindustan Times