Friday, May 1, 2009

Chamarajanagar tree slaughter

The milestone on Sathy Road says Chamarajanagar is just 10 km away. From here we drove past scores of slaughtered trees all the way to the town. Amputated tree trunks on the roadside bore mute witness to an officially sanctioned havoc to green cover.
This stretch of the road close to Chamarajanagar town has apparantly been left untouched. Could it be because the timber contractor, working his way towards the town from the sixth milestone, has yet to make it here ? Whatever the reason it was refreshing to see a patch of road well shaded with roadside trees that are decades old.
If axe-men have their way, this shaded stretch may well become a memory.Giving way to a widened, if tree-less, stretch of road such this one.
Timber contractors are at work,sawing and axing freshly chopped trees into manageable pieces of firewood.
Logs on the wayside await transport to saw mills and carpentry shops.
You could do a 1000 words on the chopped tree in this picture.
But who needs words when the trunks can speak. Road-widening is cited as an explanation. What is often not so obvious is a minor fortune some people could stand to make by lobbying for widening roads rich with old avenue trees.
Telltale remains of a chopped tree on the left of the big one suggest that road-widening may well be a pretext for converting trees into high value timber. In many cases trees that got axed could have been saved, with marginal realignment of the stretch marked for widening. But then saving trees fetch no money. And these are sturdy old trees, on which there is much money to be made by bringing them under axe.

3 comments:

ER Ramachandran said...

with apologies to Robert Frost:

The Official and Politician said to the contractor, 'You cut and saw; We will take 'care'; so together they cut everything their eyes could see; were their eyes seeing anything like what could happen to their children and their children? No, I w'd say, not a chance.
These are the modertn cannibals; Gobbling up anything they espy.

Lakshmi Bharadwaj said...

Oh no, this is terrible!! it looks so sad! reminds me of my neighbour who cut down trees! How can the government allow the cutting of these trees...terrible!!

krishna chottemanda poovaiah said...

Wow its incredible that awareness among our people has reached to the extent that they are too worried about the trees by the road thats really good! but sometimes there are things which would beckon authorities to cut them.
1.Old tree branches might fall directly in to the vehicle.It is certain that metal bodies of our vehicle gives away causing even death.

2.To accomodate growing no vehicles road has to be widened by hook or crook!

Anyway felling of trees has its own advantages and disadvatages as well.

when we look at the deforestation rate of indian forests with the looting of precious timbers like rose wood,deodar,nandi etc. the felling of trees by the road matter is really negligible and a small matter.
So hope that you guys sensitise the rest.more pathetic news is one of the best hard wood (that is rose wood) is already a endangered species do something to stop it from becoming extinct instead of craping on this useless matter.
thank you
krishna poovaiah.
Nathan Road, Kwaloon
Hong Kong.