CHENNAI: Planting of saplings under the Green Tamil Nadu Mission will begin by July-end in the northern districts of the state, following the project being kickstarted in a few western and southern districts, a senior official said.
“The afforestation programme launched at present will differ from earlier ones. The planted saplings will have a geo-tagging feature to help monitor the saplings around the clock,” said director of Green TN Mission, Deepak Srivastava.
For this purpose, the department has created an app. In the districts of Chennai, Kancheepuram, Chengalpet and Tiruvallur, 28 nurseries run by the forest department are ready with nearly 50,000 saplings. The plantation target for the current year is 2.5 crore saplings across the state, he said.
Srivastava said the forest department has 232 nurseries in the state, which can raise 1.75 crore saplings.This year, the saplings raising work began in April. From next year, it will begin from November. The department is taking steps to enhance the capacity of these nurseries, the officer said.
In the districts of Chennai, Chengalpet, Kancheepuram and Tiruvallur alone 6.63 lakh saplings will be planted. Among these districts Chengalpet and Kancheepuram put together 2.28 lakh saplings will be planted. The planting will begin from July end and it will be completed by October. In each district, the collector is monitoring the planting works and the information is updated on the mission’s portal gtm.org.in/gtmapp/login.aspx
Once the planting is completed a third party auditing of the saplings will be done. For this purpose the department will take the help of Centre for Ecological Studies, IISc, Bengaluru, Madras Institute of Development Studies, Madras School of Economics and Institute of Remote Sensing, Anna University.
