Srinagar, Sept. 3 -- By Javed Hussain Mir

Deodar trees on the slopes above Srinagar have stood without an axe touching their trunks since December 1996, the month the Supreme Court's intervention in the T.N. Godavarman case closed off green-tree felling across Jammu and Kashmir's forests.

Only the fallen, the diseased and the dry could still be removed.

Three decades on, those same trees have grown taller, and the policy that protected them has grown almost as fixed as the wood itself.

The reasoning behind the ban held up well at the time. Illegal and poorly regulated timber extraction was stripping J&K's conifer belt, monitoring was weak, and deodar, kail and fir fetched prices high enough to tempt anyone with an axe and a truck.

St...