Noida targets to plant one million saplings
NOIDA: Gautam Budh Nagar will see another plantation drive this year, with the state government setting a target of planting over a million saplings in the district. Officials said that the current year’s target is about two lakh more saplings than that of the previous year. The move is aimed at increasing the district’s green cover, which is just 1.56% of the total area.
The officials said that the government on Tuesday announced the annual mass plantation drive with a target of 300 million saplings throughout the state.
According to the forest department, while the target of 1.026 million saplings has been set, the date of plantation drive, which is usually a single-day event, is yet to be decided.
“We are yet to receive a date for the massive plantation drive. We will try to plant 1.05 million saplings. We already have 1.20 lakh saplings in the state-run nurseries across the district,” said Pramod Kumar Srivastava, divisional forest officer, GB Nagar.
He added that the department will plant more indigenous species and the aim will be to notify maximum places for plantation along Hindon and Yamuna, and within 5km area of the two rivers.
“We will soon come out with a plan, including departmentwise plantation target, as different government departments will have to come together to achieve such a big target. Last year, 26 departments came together to plant over 0.9 million saplings in a day,” said Srivastava.
On July 5, 2020, GB Nagar had witnessed a massive plantation drive during which, the officials said, about 0.936 million saplings were planted against a target of 0.85 million.
The massive plantation drive in the state was started in 2019, when over 0.8 million saplings were planted in GB Nagar on August 15. The aim of the drive is to increase the green cover of the state to 15% (36,146 sq km) of its geographical area by 2021, against 12.09% (29,133.5 sq km) as in 2019.
Of its total geographical area of 1,282 sq km, GB Nagar has 19.99 sq km (1.56%) of the area under green cover. The district has five moderate dense forests (70%-40 % density), while 15 are open forests (39%-10% density).
The plantation drives held by the forest department have, however, been questioned as the India state of forest report (ISFR) 2019 showed that there had been no increase in the green cover over the years.
According to the report (2017-19) of its total area of 1,282 sq km, Gautam Budh Nagar had 1.56%, around 20sqkm, area under forest cover. The forest cover, according to the previous assessment ISFR-2017, was also 1.56% which is around 20sqkm of total area. However, officials had then stated that while it takes 5-6 years for the plantations to compliment the green cover, there had been no organised massive plantation drives in the district before 2019.
OFFICIALS SAID THAT THE DATE OF PLANTATION DRIVE, WHICH IS USUALLY A SINGLE-DAY EVENT, IS YET TO BE DECIDED