Lahore losing trees by thousands

Citizens complain development managers are on a chopping spree

LAHORE: The slogan of ‘hara bhara Punjab’ may not hold true for much longer, at least for Lahore, which has lost around 2,500 trees in the last couple of years due to urban development.

Hundreds of trees were chopped down to widen Canal Road and Gulberg-Jail Road signal free corridor projects. Recently, dozens of trees were removed for Chubacha Underpass and in Harbanspura on the pretext of development.

Dozens of citizens from northern part of the city complained that development managers were on a tree cutting spree. A citizen, Muhammad Kashif, said it’s a pity that the government was not paying attention to the issue.

Speaking to The Express Tribune, Environmental Jurist Sardar Aasif Ali Sial stressed that development should not be done at the cost of environment. “Tree cutting will have a devastating environmental impact in the city, but authorities are not paying any attention to protecting the environment,” he added.

The government is negating its own legislation by cutting trees in the name of development, he said, adding it will have an adverse impact on environment because trees are the natural absorbents of carbon dioxide. “The government should take the environment seriously as issues like global warming and climate change are some of the biggest challenges at the moment, said Aasif.

Parks and Horticulture Authority (PHA) Director Mian Shakeel Ahmad said the authority had imported a state-of-the-art tree transplanting machine from the US to relocate fully-grown trees from one location to another, but it has its own limitations. The machine had a capacity to relocate trees that have a stem diameter of 2-2.5 feet. Tree with larger or “fatter” stems could not be relocated with this machine.

He claimed that those trees were cut after considering all options available to save them.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 14^th, 2017.