Dinesh Kamath's news 'Activists complain about many trees having been killed at New Panvel' that was published in Newsband

Activists complain about many trees having been killed at New Panvel

By Dinesh Kamath

Above: Well grown trees chopped off

Above: Poison being injected into the tree

NAVI MUMBAI: At New Panvel, there are constant cases of trees being killed by poisoning them. The complaint related to this anti-social activity was lodged to tree activists by some of the residents staying at New Panvel. The last incident occurred somewhere near Khanda colony and the activists have requested the local police to find the miscreants and take appropriate action against them.

Trees do not grow overnight. It takes months and years for a delicate plant to grow into a strong tree. When some miscreants go around poisoning fully grown and strong trees in big number one can imagine the disappointments felt by environment activists who already find that there are not enough trees around to create the environmental balance. They were shocked to see the trees in New Panvel trimmed considerably and some trees had dried up owing to having been poisoned with chemical.  

A local resident who was a witness to this happening did question one of the persons who was chopping off the trees. He gave a flimsy reason. He said that some vehicle owners had paid him to do that job so that during monsoon the trees don’t fall on their vehicles while they are driving or if they have parked them at that location.  

Thus the complaints about trees being poisoned to death or trimmed considerably at New Panvel are constantly pouring into the offices of the activists. Some residents have also accused City and Industrial Development Corporation of hiring their men to cut down the trees or granting permission to the locals or the members of housing societies to trim the trees for some reason or the other.  

One of the residents said, “There is no harm if some of the trees are cut for genuine reasons. But excessive cutting of the trees is bad. There are certain elements who cut the trees just to obtain the wood which if they sell in the market can fetch them a big amount. There are some poor ones who have to burn wood to cook their food and these people resort to cutting trees just to obtain those woods.”

An expert on trees said “The tree-killers normally chemically treat and kill trees. They might also apply herbicide to a specific area on the tree. These applications reduce impacts on adjacent vegetation from drift or over-spray. But other methods require complete herbicide coverage on foliage or soil, just a bit more complicated.

Here are the most effective available chemical methods used to kill trees. There are various methods employed by these killers to kill trees. One is Cut Surface Treatments. They make cuts around the entire circumference of the tree trunk with an axe or hatchet and then they immediately apply the selected herbicide into the cuts. This kills the tree. Another method is by Injecting. Here the specialized tree injection equipment is used to administer a specific amount of herbicide into the tree when the cut is made. The third method is Stump Treatments. Here you actually cut a tree down and treat the freshly cut surface with herbicide to prevent sprouting. Then there is Basal Bark Treatment where the herbicide is applied to the lower 12 to 18 inches of the tree trunk (on the bark). Herbicide spray mixed with oil is mixed here until the bark is saturated. This method can kill trees of all sizes. Then there is Foliage Treatment which is a common method of applying herbicides to brush up to 15 feet tall. Except in very sensitive species, spraying growing plants with rapidly elongating stems will burn the plant. The last is the Soil Treatment. Here the poison is applied evenly to the soil surface after which it can move into the root zone of the targeted plants. This type of application can kill large numbers of trees. Thus these are the methods employed by tree-killers.”