The mowing permit was used as a dish for illegal logging of the Nilgiris forest, alleged activists

The trees allegedly violated the cutting license of Sholur Town Panchayat in Manikkal Village, Nilgiris. |Photo source: Rohan Premkumar

Recent cuts of hundreds of trees in Manickal, Sholur, exposed the flaws when income land borders the jurisdictions of the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve (MTR) and the Nilgiris Forest departments, with the lack of monitoring mechanisms and the inability to monitor the terms of granting tree permits.

According to officials, the district-level logging commission has allowed the tax bureau and Panchayat, Shaulol town, to cut down 40 “hazardous” trees in Manickal to ensure vehicles can operate the waste reclamation facility there.

Panchayat executive Ma Harshad told Hindu The exotic shelves of eucalyptus trees on either side of the road leading to the facility pose a threat to workers and vehicles using the road, especially during the monsoon, which must be removed. “We only asked for permission from about eight trees on both sides of the road,” Mr Harshad said.

The contractor allegedly used the license as a 40 tree order Carte Blanche More than 250 trees fell in the area. Unfortunately, his recklessness led him to accidentally invade the buffer boundary of MTR, and he was said to have cut down 10 trees, prompting the forest department to arrest two people, 43-year-old P. Shanmugavel and R. Pravithkumar, 49-year-old R. Pravithkumar, employed by the contractor and in Case -Gvis -Gviswanathantan, of Kotagantan.

Conservationists who asked for anonymity said the incident proved that once license was obtained, there were few appropriate mechanisms to monitor whether the trees marked as cut were removed and whether the contractor had cut down more trees than allowed.

A top forest department official said that while trees on private land are protected by the Tamil Nadu Hills Region (The Protection of Trees) Act 1955 and the department monitors the number of trees cut down on private land, they will monitor to the tax department when trees pulled from the land that belong to them are lifted. “With the rebellion on the rebellious land, we usually keep it for them to monitor and make sure the contractor complies with the cutting order issued by the Tree Cutting Committee, which also includes officials from the Forest Department.

Protectionists say the current mechanism is highly opaque and there is little to stop armed tailing orders from contractors to cut down trees more than specified numbers. “Independent third parties should also have the right to check the authority and actual reality statistics between each other and actual reality,” the conservationists said, adding that due to the lack of teams monitoring tree cuts in Nilgiris, it is possible that local Shola species may even be smuggled from reserve forests.

When contacted, Udhagamandalam’s tax zoning official said he was unaware of any violations of the tree cut permit by the Shaulol contractor. However, the executive of Panchayat, Shoal town, said the forest department had informed him of illegally cutting trees and told the contractor to comply with the cut permit. “I don’t know the exact number of trees being cut down, because we only asked to cut down 7-8 trees along the edge of the road for safety purposes,” he said.

P. Arunkumar’s deputy director of MTR (buffer) told Hindu The Forest Department uses GPS locations to check the extent of its boundaries and learn that certain tree cuts occur within their jurisdiction prompting them to take action against the contractors.