Metro plants 1,500 saplings in place of 400 trees cut

Kochi: The ‘greens’ can now heave a sigh of relief. Their apprehensions over the loss of a substantial green cover over the city to the metro works were allayed when the Kochi Metro Rail Limited started planting trees on an extensive scale.

In the casting yard at the FACT-owned land, KMRL has already planted nearly 1,500 saplings in the place of 400 trees that were cut. Compensatory planting as soon as trees are cut would help in reducing the damage done to the environment to a great extent, said green experts.

“Most of the trees cut were acacia and other jungle varieties while new saplings planted in the area are of mahogany, gooseberry, jambu and mango. Tree guards have been erected to protect the saplings and for the next three years, we’ll take care of the trees,” said sources at KMRL.

The KMRL authorities had earlier announced that the project would be rolled out with minimum environmental impact. The metro authorities are also planning to adopt a few roads in the city for planting trees.

Meanwhile, the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) has also started replanting saplings at the casting yard in the HMT-owned land near Kalamassery. Though the DMRC had planted more than 500 saplings in the area, most of them did not survive as they had no tree guards.

Though the DMRC had earlier announced that they would plant 10 saplings in place of every tree cut down, they were finding it difficult to identify land for the compensatory tree planting initiative.