The Hindu 24.06.2013
City parks to get local trees
The city’s parks may be lush and green but the trees and bushes in them are not native to the country.
To promote indigenous green cover, the Chennai Corporation is now planning to plant native trees in all of its 324 parks. The move is also aimed at supporting local birds and insects that thrive on these trees.
On Saturday, the civic body held a meeting with various NGOs involved in environmental work, to chalk out the details of the project.
“The meeting included a sensitisation programme for all Corporation officials on the necessity of preserving local species of trees and shrubs. There were also several ideas mooted on preventing tree abuse,” said a Corporation official.
One of the participants of the meeting was Shobha Menon, managing trustee of Nizhal, an NGO that works to promote tree culture. “Now we can bring in more indigenous varieties of trees in all parks. All such trees can have name boards with interesting information about the species,” she said.
NGOs at Saturday’s meeting also stressed the need to raise nurseries of local trees and shrubs in all such parks with the involvement of the local community.
The civic body told the NGOs it would fully support this initiative and a resolution about this is likely to be passed by the Corporation Council shortly.
Last year, the civic body intensified landscape development in 100 new parks in the city’s recently-added areas.
Civic body to plant indigenous shrubs in all 324 parks to preserve species.