7 months ago
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Supriya Sahu, Secretary, Environment, Climate Change and Forests, said connected Friday that Senna spectabilis, a highly invasive tree, had been removed from 1,963 hectares of onshore successful the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve with the assistance of locals.
These trees person been identified connected a full of 2,448 hectares, and we person removed 80% of them truthful far. They bash not assistance successful biodiversity and are not liked by animals either. The chopped trees are being utilized for making insubstantial arsenic the Forest Department has tied up with the Tamil Nadu Newsprint and Papers Limited, she added.
Responding to a question connected the challenges from invasive taxon successful forests by The Hindu’s Chief of Bureau Ramya Kannan at a fireside chat connected Greening Tamil Nadu-The State’s Climate Action and Environmental Stewardship astatine The Hindu Sustainability Summit 2025, Ms. Sahu said galore of the projects the State was implementing were the ‘firsts’ successful India. “The lessons that we learnt have...informed our work. Removal of invasive taxon was 1 of the large challenges faced by wood managers. They are truly taking implicit the forests, not conscionable present but elsewhere too.”
Asked astir the Tamil Nadu government’s mangrove mission, she said mangroves are overmuch amended astatine anchoring carbon; they are a cradle of biodiversity; and are bully bio-shields against tsunami. She cited the examples of Muthupettai and Pichavaram where the mangroves had shielded the section communities from the tsunami.
“We worked with respective nationalist agencies to representation mangrove locations. These are not conscionable places wherever they presently beryllium but had existed earlier. We worked with section people, utilized information subject and technology, and created astir 2,400 hectares of caller mangrove plantations successful places specified as Ennore and Adyar. Those caller patches are coming up beautifully. We person created monolithic nurseries to turn the plants. One specified installation is at Ennore, which has one lakh mangrove plants,” she said.
Responding to a question connected man-animal conflict, Ms. Sahu said the State had ever followed a argumentation of co-existence and not of elimination. “There are strategies that tin assistance us, and the usage of exertion is 1 of the astir important things today.”
“With the coming of artificial intelligence, we person acceptable up AI cameras and watchtowers in Madukkarai where we person saved the lives of elephants. We are readying to augment it [the project] with drones successful the adjacent future. In Gudalur, we are mounting up AI cameras successful a antithetic terrain. They volition travel into cognition this month-end,” she added.
