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- 2023-02-07
Coimbatore Railway station to Isha Yoga Center Cab Fare:
Read more| The Indian Forests 27-Jul-2011. |
The Indian Forests As per the latest state of forests report of the Forest Survey of India the actual forest cover of India is 19.27% of the geographic area, corresponding to 63.3 million ha. Only 38 million ha of forests in India are well stocked (crown density above 40%). This resource has to meet the demand of a population of 950 million people and around 450 million cattle. As such, country has to meet the needs of 16% of the world's population from 1% of the world forest resources. The same forest of India has also to cater for the 19% of the world cattle population. The History of Indian Forest Reserves In Mumbai (Bombay), the conservator of forest, Gibson, tried to introduce rules prohibiting shifting cultivation and plantation of teak forests. From 1865 to 1894, forest reserves were established to secure material for imperial needs. From the 18th century, scientific forest management systems were employed to regenerate and harvest the forest to make it sustainable. Between 1926 and 1947 afforestation was carried out on a large scale in the Punjab and Uttar Pradesh. In the early 1930s, people began showing interest in the conservation of wild life. Around the same time the Indian rulers of the States also started conservation of habitats to help conserve the birds and mammals in forest of India. Though all of them were hunters and between them and the British they cleaned at least 5000 tigers from the forests of India. But still these areas of conservation helped save the species from extinction and formed most of the modern National Parks in India.  The new Forest Policy of 1952 recognised the protective functions of the forest of India and aimed at maintaining one-third of India's land area under forest. Certain activities were banned and grazing restricted to protect forest of India. Much of the original British policy was kept in place, such as the classification of forest land into two broad types. The next 50 years saw development and change in people's thinking regarding the forest. A constructive attitude was brought about through a number of five-year plans. Until 1976, the forest resource was seen as a source of earning money for the state and therefore little was spent in protecting Indian forests or looking after it. Types of Forests in India In it 16 major forests types are recognised, subdivided into 221 minor types. Structure, physiognomy and floristics are all used as characters to define the types of Indian forest. The Western Ghats Monsoon forests in India occur both on the western (coastal) margins of the ghats and on the eastern side where there is less rainfall. Forests in India contain several tree species of great commercial significance (e.g. Indian rosewood Dalbergia latifolia, Malabar Kino Pterocarpus marsupium, teak and Terminalia crenulata), but they have now been cleared from many areas. In the rain forest of India there is an enormous number of tree species. At least 60 percent of the trees of the upper canopy are of species which individually contribute not more than one percent of the total number. Clumps of bamboo occur along streams or in poorly drained hollows throughout the evergreen and semi-evergreen forests of south-west India, probably in areas once cleared for shifting agriculture. The tropical vegetation of north-east India (which includes the states of Assam, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura and Meghalaya as well as the plain regions of Arunachal Pradesh) typically occurs at elevations up to 900 m. It embraces evergreen and semi-evergreen rain forests, moist deciduous monsoon forests, riparian forests, swamps and grasslands. Evergreen rain forests in India are found in the Assam Valley, the foothills of the eastern Himalayas and the lower parts of the Naga Hills, Meghalaya, Mizoram, and Manipur where the rain fall exceeds 2300 mm per annum. In the Assam Valley the giant Dipterocarpus macrocarpus and Shorea assamica occur singly, occasionally attaining a girth of up to 7 m and a height of up to 50 m. The monsoon forests in India are mainly moist sal Shorea robusta forests, which occur widely in this region (IUCN, 1991). |