In 2019, 38,000 of you supported our petition to save 1000+ Banyans of Chevella on National highway (NH)-163 from the cutter’s axe. Now those Chevella Banyans, your 1000 banyans on NH-163, are in imminent danger once again. And this time it’s urgent. The intended blow will come soon and we need your help and support again to push back and save them.
 
But first, on behalf of the Banyans of Chevella, a big, heartfelt thanks to each one of the 38,000 supporters who signed the petition in 2019, requesting the powers that be to spare the trees. Thanks to our concerted efforts and to NHAI’s financial situation, the project got shelved. And we rejoiced. But two years later, in the lull brought by the pandemic, the NHAI project to four-lane NH-163 and fell or translocate a thousand Banyans has been revived. The tenders are active online, the files are moving...

Join us again to demand that the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, and NHAI:

1. Replan the project to save, in toto, the best stretches with large, mature banyans. The trees can be retained as medians with road expansions carried out on either side. Where not feasible, the trees on one side can be retained and the road widened on the other.
2. Totally bypass the areas where the banyans are most well grown and at their most mature. Translocation is not an option for large, mature trees. Earlier attempts have shown that such trees have a poor chance of survival. It would also destroy the biodiversity these trees sustain.
3. Declare the stretch of the highway till Vikarabad, which includes the reserve forests/scrub habitats at Mudimyal and Kandlapally abutting NH-163, as the Telangana Biodiversity Heritage Road.

The Banyans of Chevella may be one of the last stretches of road-lining banyans to survive intact in Telangana. Since this is an old highway, the Banyans can be dated to the last Nizam’s enlightened green policy of planting shade-bearing trees alongside major roads. Keeping the Banyans intact would honour this past even as we look forward to sustainable futures.
 
Mudimyal and Kandlapally are two of the few remaining grassland/scrub habitats on NH-163. They play host to many grassland specialist animals, notably the migrating Harriers that winter here and the now rare Tawny Eagles that nest here (listed as ‘Vulnerable’ in the IUCN Red List). Together with the Banyans, they can make a ‘heritage road’ that represents an alternative, more sustainable future that we can bequeath our children. Heritage Roads are ideally preserved intact on cultural, aesthetic, historical, and ecological grounds, and will acquire their own unique touristic and heritage value if properly protected and developed.
 
The banyans, even today, are bursting with birdsong, attracting hundreds of bees, butterflies and wasps; squirrels springing up their aerial roots; hornbills, koels, crows, barbets and mynahs trilling in their canopies. These tree-tops are home to raptors like buzzards and spotted eagles. They are keystone species, entire ecosystems in themselves. Save them and you save multitudes. If the banyans go, entire ecosystems die, heritage disappears, and local economies collapse.

Let us work together to save the Chevella Banyans. Again.