India, April 7 -- Two major proposed roads-the Pune-Nashik highway and the Chandrapur-Nagpur highway are set to claim thousands of trees in Maharashtra. The Chandrapur-Nagpur highway will also wreak damage on two tiger corridors-the Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve and the Kanhargaon Wildlife Sanctuary.

The highway will take up 109 hectares of forest land, and a total of 32,025 trees will be cut for the project. The Pune-Nashik highway, on the other hand, will require the diversion of 62 hectares of forest land.

The proposals were placed before the Expert Appraisal Committee (EAC) of the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC) last month, and the highways are being constructed by the Maharashtra State Road Development C...