Present Past And Future Of Forest

Major parts of India are gifted by Mother Nature with dense and vast forest cover which several other countries don’t have. Forests have impact on the climatic conditions of the country and in the recent past, Government as well as people have realized the necessity of forests and thus numerous initiatives have been taken at various levels for protection as well as enhancing the forest covers across the country. However, for a number of reasons, forest lands sometimes have to be diverted to non-forest purposes. For example, in the wake of expanding industrial enterprise, land is needed as an item of basic infrastructure. This is true for Jammu and Kashmir as well. Increase in population brings pressures on natural resources like water, space and services. This also leads to shrinking of forest cover. Encroachment of forest land is also a loss to the forest wealth. No doubt forest authorities and policy planners in J&K have envisaged in good time the need of afforestation. As a result, we have the important forest conservation wing which takes care of giving new life to forest wealth by planting saplings of the variety that flourish in respective forest compartments. Although, the Government functionaries have been emphasizing on the importance of green cover, yet we find that the allocations for maintaining the forest cover especially for nude areas have been dwindling which has become a reason for concern for the ecologists in Jammu & Kashmir. The afforestation is carried out by the Forest Department with funds made available under State Sector, District Sector, National Afforestation Programme and Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) etc. However, it was observed that in past few years, the allocation of funds for the afforestation purpose was not adequate. This was not an encouraging signs and may lead to facing a critical condition in regard to our ecological balance. Many of our forests will become nude and apart from ecological degradation we shall also be losing the lever of attracting tourists.
Thus, we see that the Government though believing it is saving funds on the one hand is actually losing it on the other. In these circumstances, we are gravely concerned and would like to convey to the authorities that providing sufficient funds to the Forest Department is highly advisable to ensure that we do not lose our green gold. At the same time, we also expect the Forest Department to show its ability of showing commendable output by planting maximum number of saplings and bringing more of nude forest lands under plantation. The department must streamline its activities and show innovative approaches to the philosophy of afforestation. There has to be close cooperation between the Revenue and Forest Departments and records have to be set clear and clean showing the boundaries of forest lands. Moreover, a concerted effort has to be made to vacate the illegal encroachments of forest land because we know huge forest lands have been illegally occupied by powerful persons. Though the Government has repeatedly announced that forest land under illegal occupation would be evicted at any cost, no concrete efforts were seen in this regard except removal of encroachment of a few hutments in a few cases. The Government and Forest department must take strict action against the forest encroachers as those destroying green cover are not only plundering green gold but also posing a severe threat to the environment. The civil society should also come forward in assisting the Government agencies to protest the forest covers by immediately bringing into notice the concerned authorities about any attempt of damaging green gold. We as citizen have the responsibility to protect the forest covers for our future generation and our own interest.
(Author is EVS Lecturer at Govt Higher Secondary School Kheelani Doda. The views, opinions, facts, assumptions, presumptions and conclusions expressed in this article are those of the authors and aren’t necessarily in accord with the views of “Kashmir Horizon”.)
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