Over 7,500 trees cut for 16-km section of Delhi-Dehradun Expressway: RTI

As many as 7,575 trees have been felled on a nearly 16-km-long section of the Delhi-Dehradun Expressway and over 1.76 lakh are to be planted in compensation for it, according to the National Highways Authority of India. Of the felled trees on the Ganeshpur-Dehradun section of the project, 4,983 were in Uttarakhand, while 2,592 were in Uttar Pradesh, the NHAI said in response to a query filed under provisions of the Right To Information (RTI) Act. In the RTI query, Noida-based social activist Amit Gupta also sought to know the status of replantation and survival of trees on the 15.8-km-long section of the Delhi-Dehradun Expressway. In his response, Pankaj Kumar Mourya, the public information officer-cum-project director, said 155 trees have been translocated in Uttar Pradesh and 121 of them have survived the translocation. According to the compensatory afforestation scheme submitted by the forest departments of Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand, 1,76,050 trees are to be planted by them