Munde memorial site rich with birds, snakes, trees: Experts

The site of the proposed memorial to BJP stalwart late Gopinath Munde on Jalna Road in Maharashtra's Aurangabad district is almost an urban forest with a wide variety of trees, birds and snakes, and clearing it would bring ecological harm to the already-polluted area, environmentalists said on Monday.

Munde, a former deputy chief minister and one of the BJP's biggest mass leaders in the state, died on June 3, 2014 in a road mishap in New Delhi, days after he was sworn in as a cabinet minister in the first term of the Narendra Modi government.

The state PWD had given a letter to the Aurangabad Municipal Corporation last week seeking permission to fell 110 trees for construction of the memorial.

"The site of the memorial has nests of four types of snakes, 15 types of butterflies, and some 25 varieties of birds. The area is already polluted and cutting 110 trees for the memorial would only aggravate the issue," environment expert Dr Kishore Pathak told PTI.

He said surveys of the area have found nests of cobra, trinket and green keelback snakes, besides birds like hornbill, sparrows, kingfisher, coppersmith, Asian koel, coucal (cuckoo family) and jungle babbler (type of songbird).

"It also has several butterflies, all of which would be affected if the tree cover in the area is reduced or cleared," Pathak said.

According to environment expert Milind Girdhari, the area is home to full grown mango, tamarind, Albizia lebbeck (flea tree), Bombax Ceiba (cotton tree), Bauhinia Purpera (orchid tree), eucalyptus, neem and banyan trees among others.

"It is one of the remaining oxygen zones of the city and felling them for a memorial on a plot of almost six acres is uncalled for. It is located in the heart of the city," Girdhari pointed out.

When queried on the issue, BJP leader Bhagwat Karad said "necessary changes" would be introduced in the memorial plan to save "maximum trees" at the site.

Ram Budhwant, a BJP worker, said everyone wanted the memorial as Munde was a very popular leader, but they were also of the opinion that damage to flora and fauna should be "minimum".

The city was recently at the centre of a row over felling of trees for a proposed memorial for late Shiv Sena patriarch Bal Thackeray, and negative media reports as well as brickbats on social media got the ruling party to give assurances that an eco-friendly way would be found out.

The carshed for an underground metro line in Mumbai has also been at the eye of a storm, as it involves felling of several hundred trees in Aarey Colony, one of the major green lungs of the metropolis.