Talking to mediapersons here today, Forest Minister Jitendra Choudhury said there was a hue and cry from different sections due to tree-felling in the city because of road expansion and other developmental activities in Agartala, so the government had decided to bring the entire city under complete green cover by next three years.
''It is indeed difficult to protect all aged trees in this urbanised world and Agartala cannot be an exception, but our policy is very clear that compensatory forests will increase the level of carbon dioxide consumption and ultimately reduce global warming,'' Mr Choudhury said.
Mr Choudhury said last year the Tripura forest department had brought 11,170.32 hectares of land under plantations, including 22.53 lakh bamboo saplings, besides creating 297 water bodies spread over 445.5 hectares of land.
He announced that this year they would bring 1400 hectares of land under green cover, including 97 hectares of river bank plantation, and 487 hectares land would be converted into water bodies and the activity was started formally today at the State Level Vanamahotsava in secretariat complex. Supporting compensatory forestry in city area, environmentalists said one tree over a century would absorb 1100 kg of CO2 from the atmosphere and an acre of about 400 young growing trees could absorb 5000 kg of CO2 per year. In contrast a mature tree only absorbs 7.5 kg of CO2 per year whereas a young and actively growing tree could absorb 13 kg of CO2 in a year.