Team Herald
CANACONA: Around 13,000 trees have been marked to be cut in Pisonem range forest to enable road-widening along National Highway 17.
Motorists will heave a sigh of relief over the decision to widen the road between Gulem till Padi on NH 17, as the route witnessed frequent accidents on the winding and treacherous road conditions.
Those passing the Karmal Ghat these days may notice that several trees that will soon be cut have been numbered and labelled.
Sources at forest department revealed that the list would be forwarded to the environment ministry after completing the valuation of over 13,000 big, medium and small trees, most of which are eucalyptus, teak, crocodile bark (Madti) and termenelia peniculata (Kindal). Sources also told this correspondent that the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) as per the existing laws will pay double the amount of actual valuation of the trees to be felled.
It has been a long pending demand of the motorists to widen the existing single carriageway road, which is notorious for frequent accidents, from Polem till Margao into four lane. According to the norms of the forest department, for each tree cut two new trees are to be grown and when the senior forest officials were asked about the plans of the forest department regarding afforestation with regards to the felling of such a large number of trees, they said the process was in the preliminary stage and PWD has to apply for diversion of forest land for non-forestry use to forest department under Section 2 of Forest (conservation) Act of 1980.
However, environmentalist Abhijit Prabhudesai disagrees with the decision to fell such a large number of trees and opined the construction of a tunnel instead.
