Civic body sets deadline for tree census

Lotus Environments,the agency that has been carrying out the tree census,has been doing it for the last one and a half year. So far,over twenty lakh trees have been surveyed.

“The work of the tree census was kick-started in July 2008 and so far,the agency has been able to survey over 20 lakh trees in the city. The agency had been given a deadline earlier,which was later extended by six months. But we cannot keep on extending it further. Therefore,we have now set a deadline of March 2010. We have also chalked out an areawise programme for the agency ,” Balasaheb Jagzap,a senior official of the civic garden department.

The surveying agency has been counting trees in private as well as government-owned properties. Apart from capturing images,details like scientific name,height,approximate age,the circumference of the tree-trunk,description of the property,its survey number,have also been taken into account.

“The civic body has now given us a timeframe of three months to complete the data gathering and compilation work. The survey is taking a lot of time,as there are a number of things to do. The delay is mainly because of the citizens. When we go to a particular property,people take objections,grill us and even try to stop the work. Hence,we first have to explain and convince the people what we are going to do,” Sandeep Jadhav,project manager of Lotus Environments said.

He added,“To complete the task,we will rope in some extra staff. Earlier,we had 32 employees in the team. Now,we are going to increase the figure to forty. Our aim is to meet the target on time,”

The PMC had carried out a tree-census between 1997-98,according to which there were 32.88 lakh trees in the city.