NHAI Shifts Highway Plantations Towards Ecology
Bee Corridors to Cover 60% of NHAI Tree Drive
New Delhi: The National Highways Authority of India has announced a plan to develop pollinator or ‘Bee Corridors’ along National Highways, under which flowering trees and plants will be planted in continuous stretches to support honeybees and other pollinating insects.
Internationally, similar ideas have been tested largely at smaller and more localised scales. Cities such as Oslo have promoted bee highways that link parks, rooftops and gardens through continuous nectar sources, while projects such as the Pollinator Pathway in Seattle have created linear corridors of native flowering plants across urban neighbourhoods. In parts of the United Kingdom and North America, transport agencies have experimented with wildflower verges and pollinator-friendly roadside plantations. Unlike these initiatives, which remain confined to urban or community landscapes, NHAI’s proposal seeks to extend the concept across a national transport network, giving it a scale and geographic reach that has few international parallels.
However, the announcement does not specify whether any pilot projects or scientific impact assessments have been carried out to determine how effectively such corridors will attract pollinators under Indian highway conditions, which are characterised by heavy traffic, air pollution and routine maintenance activity. It also does not address how potential interactions between bees and commuters at toll plazas, fuel stations and roadside amenities will be managed.
Ecologists note that the long-term success of such corridors depends not only on planting flowering species but also on sustained maintenance, reduced pesticide use and careful placement away from zones of high human activity. Without these measures, they caution, the ecological promise of the corridors could remain largely theoretical.
The Bee Corridor initiative will form a major component of NHAI’s plantation programme for 2026–27. The authority plans to plant around 40 lakh trees along National Highways during the year, with nearly 60 per cent of them proposed under the Bee Corridor initiative. Field offices across the country have been instructed to plan and develop at least three pollinator corridors each during the same period.
Under the programme, continuous linear stretches of bee-friendly vegetation will be created along selected highway sections and on other vacant land parcels under NHAI’s control. The objective is to ensure the availability of nectar and pollen throughout the year by planting flowering trees and plants in a manner that allows staggered blooming across different seasons, enabling a near-continuous flowering cycle.
The initiative marks a shift in NHAI’s plantation strategy from ornamental landscaping to ecological plantations. Instead of focusing primarily on visual greenery, plantation activities will now be aligned towards supporting pollinators and strengthening ecological balance. Officials said National Highways present a large and relatively untapped opportunity for pollinator conservation because of their vast geographic spread and continuous land availability.
The move comes amid growing concern over increasing ecological stress faced by honeybees and other pollinating species. This stress has begun to adversely affect pollination services that are critical for agricultural and horticultural productivity and for maintaining broader ecological systems.
To implement the scheme, NHAI will redesign its plantation activities towards the creation of dedicated pollinator corridors comprising a mix of trees, shrubs, herbs and grasses. The design emphasises retaining wild elements in the landscape by planting nectar- and pollen-rich species, allowing flowering weeds to bloom naturally, and preserving dead wood and hollow trunks that are considered beneficial habitats for pollinators. Selection of plant species will be guided by the need to ensure staggered flowering so that food sources remain available across different seasons.
Native species will form the backbone of the plantations. Trees and plants such as Neem, Karanj, Mahua, Palash, Bottle Brush, Jamun and Siris have been identified for planting along National Highways. Depending on agro-climatic conditions and local suitability, Bee Corridors will be developed along highway stretches as well as on vacant land parcels belonging to NHAI.
Implementation responsibility will rest with NHAI field offices across the country. These offices will identify suitable National Highway sections where clusters of flowering trees can be planted at intervals of approximately 500 metres to one kilometre. This spacing corresponds to the average foraging distance of honeybees and wild bees and is intended to allow pollinators to move from one flowering cluster to another without long gaps in food availability.
Officials said the initiative is expected to enhance ecological outcomes along highway networks, contribute to pollinator conservation and strengthen the integration of environmental considerations into large-scale road infrastructure development, signalling a move to link transport expansion with biodiversity-oriented plantation practices.
Yet, beyond the symbolism of planting flowers along highways, critical questions remain unanswered. The National Highways Authority of India (National Highways Authority of India) has not publicly disclosed how survival rates of pollinator-friendly plants will be measured, how pesticide use along corridors will be regulated, or whether independent ecological audits will be conducted over time.
Placed in a global context, India’s initiative seemingly represents a scale shift rather than a conceptual leap. Urban pollinator corridors in parts of Europe and North America have evolved through years of scientific tracking, municipal partnerships, and citizen stewardship, with success judged by data on bee diversity, flowering cycles, and habitat continuity rather than by plantation numbers alone. By contrast, the National Highways Authority of India is attempting to translate a city-based ecological model onto a national transport grid dominated by heavy freight movement, routine chemical spraying, and fragmented governance between highway, forest, and agriculture agencies. This raises a structural question: can conservation logic designed for compact urban ecosystems survive within long-distance, high-speed infrastructure corridors without a parallel framework for ecological monitoring, cross-ministry accountability, and community participation?
Experts warn that without sustained maintenance budgets, scientific monitoring, and coordination with state forest and agriculture departments, the project risks becoming another beautification exercise rather than a genuine conservation intervention. As Europe and North America refine urban “bee highway” models through long-term data and community stewardship, India’s experiment—spread across thousands of kilometres of freight-heavy highways—will test whether infrastructure-led environmentalism can move beyond announcements into measurable ecological outcomes.
International experience suggests that pollinator pathways succeed when treated as living ecological networks rather than landscaping projects. India’s experiment, unprecedented in geographic ambition, will therefore be judged not by its novelty but by whether it institutionalises science-based oversight and long-term maintenance on the same scale as it builds roads—transforming highways from symbols of extraction into instruments of ecological repair.
The real verdict will not lie in saplings planted, but in whether pollinator populations return to landscapes long dominated by concrete, chemicals, and constant traffic.
– global bihari bureau
