Willingdon Island is the greenest area in the city.
The North and South divisions of the Island together have 413 trees. It is followed by Ernakulam South (291), Thamannam (235), and Gandhi Nagar (229).
The status of the green cover for Kochi was revealed in a tree census that was carried out recently.
The Kochi city region has 6,443 trees located in public places, according to the census carried out by the Rajagiri outREACH of the Rajagiri School of Social Sciences, Kalamassery, for the Kochi Corporation.
Trees located in private holdings were not counted.
The other greenest divisions in the city are Panampilly Nagar (213), Fort Kochi (211), Elamkulam (194), Karukapally (183) and Padivattom (179).
Concrete jungle has invaded Ponekkara the most. It is the division with the least tree cover in the city with just 15 trees followed by Kaloor North (18 trees).
“The Town Planning Standing committee of the corporation decided to carry out the census as part of its green campaign. Studies had revealed that the green cover of Kochi was quite inadequate,” said E.M. Sunilkumar, chairman of the committee.
The census will serve as the basis for future greening programmes to be implemented in the city. The committee has initiated a campaign to plant around 1 lakh saplings to improve the green cover of Kochi, Mr. Sunilkumar said.
Predictably, coconut trees formed the major chunk of the trees in the city and the surveys have located 538 of them. Surveyors counted 235 banyan trees and 203 Indian Badam trees.
The survey was carried out simultaneously in all the divisions of the corporation on a single day. The team members were guided by a team of experts. The students of the Rajagiri institutions, who carried out the survey, were also given a picture catalogue for identifying the trees.
During the survey, it was found that there were 2,086 large trees, 1,953 medium-sized ones and 1,761 small trees. The surveyors also spotted 542 saplings in public places.
Nearly half of the number of trees in Kochi are naturally grown ones. The greening efforts have succeeded in growing up 2,777 trees. The tree count has also identified the threats faced by the city trees. The report will be released on Thursday.
Source: The Hindu, 8-9-2010
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