Capital Losing Greenery Despite Mega Plantation Drives

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 10th Feb, 2017 ) : The Federal Capital slowly but steadily is losing its greenery that can be gauged from shrinking volume of trees and forestry despite the civic body's mega annual tree plantation drives under which millions of saplings are planted.

The survival rate of the saplings is also a matter of great concern because the Capital Development Authority (CDA) directorate's concern showed enthusiasm only during the campaign, but the passion subsided with the passage of time.

There is no effective mechanism of monitoring the newly- planted trees and not enough staff to look after the saplings.As a result, most of them die within days after their plantation. The Federal Capital had surroundings with a natural look, beautiful trees and beds of wild flowers but it is fast losing the precious greenery, which is product of ill-planned development and poor management of the Capital Development Authority (CDA).

Talking to APP, resident of sector F-8 Dr Irshad Khan said that green belt located in F series had the largest number of dead trees.

Greenery, once a hallmark of Islamabad, now only existed in the lawns of posh sectors of the capital; therefore, old trees needed to be protected before they would vanish forever, he opined.

Preservation of old trees was a common practice in the developed countries, but the CDA had not made any efforts to tackle the challenge, another resident Shazia Khan said. She observed that CDA had chopped thousands of trees in the last few years but nobody knew where these trees had gone.The CDA conduct a two-day-long tree plantation campaign every year in which hundreds of thousands of saplings are planted, but surprisingly, the result is quite opposite, as the tree cover in Islamabad is decreasing at an alarming rate.

However, a CDA official said that the authority had increased the number of new sapling from 400,000 to 500,000 during the last Spring Tree Plantation Campaign. Out of the total planted saplings, more than 50 percent plants have grown due to strict monitoring, while further measures will be taken to improve their survival rate.