In April 1973, Chandi Prasad Bhatt helped launch the Chipko Movement in Gopeshwar, now in Uttarakhand. Decades later, mature trees, which villagers once protected from the axe with their bodies, are still not adequately valued.

Across the country, when mature trees are cut in the name of development, the question is: “How many saplings are to be planted as compensation?” But a sapling is not a mature tree, and it takes years for a sapling to accumulate as much carbon as a mature tree holds. This is changing how conservationists think of saving trees, which now starts with the question whether a mature tree can be moved and given another home.

For Hyderabad -based developer Ashwin Rao, the question arose when a nearly 100-year-old banyan tree in Zaheerabad faced the axe. In 2015, the environmental non-profit, Vata Foundation, helped him move it to vacant land he owned.…