A group of nature-lovers has come together to keep track of the Chevella banyans, which are in danger of being uprooted.
The trees which lie along a 46 km stretch of the Chevella-Vikarabad Road are estimated to be at least a 100 years old. (Supplied)
Nature lovers from Hyderabad have prepared a map marking the GPS locations of banyan trees at the Chevella locality outside the state capital Hyderabad, so that town planners don’t include these spots under a road-widening plan.
The initiative is part of the “Save the Banyans of Chevella” campaign, which seeks to safeguard 914 mature banyan trees in that locality from being felled for the widening of a section of the Hyderabad-Bijapur highway.
Some of these trees were planted during the Nizam’s rule and are over 100 years old.
Prof Usha Raman of the University of Hyderabad, a nature lover involved in the campaign, said 20 volunteers aged 12 years to 68 years worked over four days on the mapping.
“They have meticulously geotagged 914 endangered banyans which involved marking the GPS location of each tree,” Raman told reporters.
Nature Lovers of Hyderabad geotagged 914 banyan trees. (Supplied)
Alongside, the group also documented the latitude and longitude of the trees and made “other observations” including the measurements of girth and prop root length, she said.
The programme began almost four years ago when some 20 activists banded together to launch a signature campaign to impress upon states to protect the trees in situ — as a habitat and heritage — and preserve the region’s biodiversity.
The petition garnered over 62,000 signatures over the past four years.
The group demands to replan the project to save the banyan trees. (Supplied)
The Chevella patch is part of a 46-km stretch of the Hyderabad-Bijapur National Highway — from the
suburbs of Hyderabad to Manneguda in Vikarabad district — that the National Highways Authority of
India plans to widen to a four-lane affair.
An estimated 9,000 trees, including the Chevella banyans, are in danger of getting uprooted because
of the road widening.
The campaigners said that the project plan had clearly not assessed the damage to the environment.
“But the banyan trees can be saved if, instead of the existing plan, they construct two roads on either
side of the trees,” they said.
The translocation of trees will disrupt the ecosystem argues the group. (Supplied)
The group opposes the translocation of the trees, fearing they are too old to survive the process.
“Translocation involves treating a massive tree like a bonsai — cutting branches, trimming roots, treating these with chemicals, and killing its soul,” naturalist Kobita Das told South First.
“What is moved at the end of this process is most often a stump with a few branches and leaves. It is not advisable for old and valuable trees.”
Her view is that the banyans were best left where they were, and revered as part of “our natural history”.
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