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The Bombay High Court on Friday permitted the National High Speed Rail Corporation (NHSRCL) to cut around 20,000 mangrove trees in the city and neighbouring districts of Palghar and Thane for the Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train project. A division bench of Chief Justice Dipankar Datta and Justice Abhay Ahuja allowed the plea filed by the NHSRCL seeking permission to cut the mangrove trees. As per a 2018 order of the high court, there exists a "total freeze" on the destruction of mangroves across the state and permission has to be sought from the high court each time an authority wishes to fell mangroves for any public project. As per the said order, a 50 m buffer zone must be created around the area that hosts the mangroves and no construction activity or dumping of debris can be permitted within this buffer zone. In its petition filed in 2020, the NHSRCL had assured the court it would plant five times the total mangrove trees that were earlier proposed to be felled and the number wo
The Delhi High Court on Thursday stayed any further felling of trees in the national capital, saying there is no other way to mitigate the ecological and environmental degradation in the city. Justice Nazmi Waziri, who was hearing a contempt case concerning the preservation of trees, noted that over 29,000 trees were cut down in the past three years in the city and questioned if Delhi has the luxury to bear such numbers. We have stopped felling of trees... Till the next date, no felling of trees, the judge said as the case was listed for further hearing on June 2. A total of 29,946 trees were allowed to be cut in the past three years, which on computation comes to 27 trees per day i.e. 1.13 per hour, the judge noted. The court stated that there is no record with respect to the girth and the age of the trees that were allowed to be cut down or the status of the corresponding transplantation of trees and emphasised that large scale denudation of fully grown trees worsens the ecology.
Detected deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon reached a record high for the month of February following a similar record the prior month. Satellite alerts of deforestation in February corresponded to 199 square kilometers (77 square miles), the highest indicator for that month in seven years of record-keeping and 62% more than in the same month in 2021, according to preliminary data from the Brazilian space agency's Deter monitoring system that were released on Friday. Deter data last month showed January registered 430 square kilometers of deforestation, more than quadruple the level in the same month last year. January and February are among the months that register the least amount deforestation, and pale in comparison to levels seen in the Southern Hemisphere's summer months. Still, some have argued the uptick could be a worrisome sign for months to come, with loggers and legislators eager to make headway before a possible handover of presidential power next ...