The recent felling of hundreds of trees in Manickal in Sholur on a revenue land bordering the jurisdictions of the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve (MTR) and the Nilgiris forest division has exposed the flaws in the lack of a monitoring mechanism to oversee if the terms of the permissions granted for tree-felling are being adhered to. According to officials, the district-level tree cutting committee had given its permission to the Revenue Department and the Sholur town panchayat for the felling of 40 “dangerous” trees in Manickal to ensure that vehicles can ply to the waste reclamation facility operating there. M.A. Harshad, Executive Officer of the panchayat, told The Hindu the exotic stands of eucalyptus trees located on either side of the road leading to the facility posed a threat to the workers as well as vehicles using the road, especially during the monsoons, necessitating that they be removed. “We had only sought permission for around eight trees located on either side of the road to be removed,” said Mr. Harshad. Armed with an order for the felling of 40 trees, the contractor is alleged to have used the permission as a carte blanche to fell more than 250 trees in the area. His recklessness unfortunately led him to accidentally trespass within the boundaries of the buffer zone of MTR, where he is said to have cut down 10 trees, prompting the Forest Department to arrest two persons, identified as P. Shanmugavel, 43, and R. Pravithkumar, 49, employed by the contractor, and accused number three in the case - G.V.Viswanathan, from Kotagiri. Conservationists from the Nilgiris, requesting anonymity, said that this incident proved that once permissions were granted, that there was almost no mechanism in place to monitor whether the trees marked for cutting were the ones that were removed, and if the contractor was cutting more number of trees than permitted. A top Forest Department official said that while trees in private lands were protected under the Tamil Nadu Hill Areas (Preservation of Trees) Act, 1955, and that the department monitored the number of trees cut in private lands, that they left monitoring to the Revenue Department when the trees were uprooted from lands belonging to them. “As the felling took place on revenue land, we usually leave it up to them to monitor and ensure that the contractor is in compliance with the cutting orders issued by the tree-cutting committee, which also includes officials from the Forest Department. Conservationists said that the current mechanism was highly opaque, and that there was very little to discourage a contractor armed with a cutting order to cut trees exceeding the numbers specified. “An independent third party should also be empowered to check if the permissions and the actual on-ground reality tally with each other,” said the conservationist, adding that there was a likelihood that even native Shola tree species could be being smuggled out of reserve forests due to the lack of a team to monitor tree-cutting in the Nilgiris. When contacted, the Revenue Divisional Officer in Udhagamandalam said that he was not aware of any violations of the tree cutting permissions by the contractor in Sholur. However, the Sholur Town Panchayat’s Executive Officer said that he had been informed by the Forest Department of the illegal felling of trees and had told the contractor to abide by the cutting permissions. “I do not know the exact number of trees that have been cut, as we only asked for 7-8 trees along the road margins to be cut for safety purposes,” he said. Deputy Director of MTR (Buffer Zone), P. Arunkumar, told The Hindu the Forest Department had used GPS locations to check on the extent of their borders and learned that some of the tree felling had occurred within their jurisdiction, prompting them to take action against the contractor.