PANJIM: After being castigated by the Bombay High Court at Goa over failure to conduct a census of trees, the State government has pulled up its sleeves to undertake ground level tree census from April 18 onwards. Each tree will be provided with unique ID.
This would be the first-of-its-kind census in Goa at a time when the question of felling trees for development projects has become a contentious issue and led to an intervention by the High Court through various petitions.
The State Forest Department has constituted taluka-level teams under concerned Deputy Conservator of Forests and Assistant Conservators of Forest, who will deploy at least 10 teams, who will be allotted area or colony or weekly targets of not less than 250 trees per team per week.
The department has directed the officers in-charge to ensure that the work on ground starts latest by April 18.
Along with providing Unique ID, the census will cover the latitude and longitude of the tree, its botanical name, local name, common name, and species along with other data.
A Bench of Justices Mahesh Sonak and R N Laddha, had earlier this month, pulled up State government over its failure to conduct tree census despite court directives in 2021. Last year, the High Court had observed that over 74,000 trees were lost due to ignorance of the authorities.
As it slammed the government over its apathy, the High Court had pointed out that with the enactment of the Trees Act 1984, the government was duty-bound to carry out the tree census even in the absence of any directions from the court and added that it is not open to the Trees Authorities to either shirk or avoid compliance by putting forth a “barrage of so-called technical difficulties”.
The High Court had asked the Tree Authorities to come up with effective solutions to carry out the survey and comply with the statutory as well as the judicial mandate.
Earlier, the government had expressed its inability to conduct a tree census in the State citing operational and logistical difficulties.
