The list of these areas, categorised under various sectors such as transportation (tailpipe emission, and road dust), construction and demolition, diesel generator sets, municipal solid waste, and domestic, commercial, and industrial fuel consumption, has been handed over to the Karnataka Forest Department (KFD) for spot identification and taking up plantation activities.
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The data showed that in the given period the Tree Expert Committee (TEC) gave green signal to remove nearly 72% of the total trees that were proposed to be felled. While permission was sought by various agencies to remove 16,509 trees, 11,820 faced the axe and a little over 2,000 were translocated.
Experts cite multiple reasons for the rise in temperature in the tech capital, including the impact of El Niño, the heat-island effect resulting from diminishing green cover and encroachments on water bodies, concretisation, and glass facade buildings.
“The trees have started drying out and two are almost dead already. There are around 12 trees on Gandhi Bazaar Main Road that had started wilting due to the whitetopping work as the engineer had poured chemicals on the roots, severely damaging them. They were also cut at multiple points during the construction,” said Guru Prasad, a resident of the area.