Mumbai: Four years later, no sign of BMC’s GPS-based tree census

Even as the Shiv Sena shows its affection for trees by introducing the preservation of heritage trees the Senaruled BMC is yet to publish a tree census it completed in 2017 The study started in 2014 and the corporation spent R25 crore on the GPSbased project which was never revealed to the publicAn amendment to the Maharashtra Urban Areas Protection and Preservation of Trees Act 1975 to bring in the concept of heritage trees was approved in a meeting of the Maharashtra Cabinet last weekThe government claimed that this will help preserve existing trees having cultural importance But the tree census mandated by the same act doesnrsquot seem to be getting the BMCrsquos attentionWhat was the censusThe Act mandates a census of trees in the civic bodyrsquos jurisdiction every five years The last study mdash which used the traditional method of counting trees was published in 2008 The next census was expected to be ready in 2013 but it only began on February 10 2014 and was supposed to be complete in a year The BMC claimed that the study was GPS Global Positioning Systembased and took three years to complete The work was given to SAAR IT Resources a Nagpurbased firm The census was supposed to help people trace trees and get information like location species height girth age and condition on the civic bodyrsquos websiteBut the claim and the census seem to have disappeared even as there was an uproar against tree cutting especially due to the Metro car shed at Aarey Tree lovers and activists continue to wait for the census and the only mark of the study is the BMCrsquos Environmental Status Report where the wardwise number of trees has been mentioned but there are no further detailsldquoIn 2016 the Bombay High Court had asked the BMC to reveal the census data but they have kept it well hidden The BMC was supposed to give unique identification numbers In their absence it is not known how many trees have been cut illegally The BMC spends crores on this census and if you compare wardwise data of two censuses you will find an identical number of trees in some wards over five years Like most things in BMC the tree census is just a scamrdquo said activist Zoru BhathenaldquoThe GPSbased study would tell the total number of trees or identify the species in a particular area This would have helped preserve the cityrsquos tree cover The corporation is not interested in preserving but cutting of treesrdquo said another activistMeanwhile the BMC allows the uprooting of an estimated average of 50007000 trees for various infrastructure works every year This number has been derived from the data of the monthly Tree Authority meetings In 2019 alone the BMC published notices for the cutting of more than 20000 trees for infra works including the ones in AareyldquoThe initiative for heritage trees will surely create awareness and help preserve trees But at the same time the corporations forgot to implement the original Tree Act This is not just in Mumbai in Thane too a digitised tree census is unpublished since 2011rdquo said tree activist Rohit JoshiHe added ldquoIt is an open secret that developers mention less number of trees that would be affected by their projects than the actual number No one knows the future of transplanted trees The GPSbased data would not have allowed such illegal tricks This is why it is not seeing the light of dayrdquoJitendra Pardeshi superintendent of BMCrsquos Garden department remained unavailable for comment despite several calls and messages7kAvg no of trees BMC okays for uprooting annually