Karnataka seeks to increase green cover

The forest department has designed a scheme to increase the green cover as followed in the Western countries where the natural forest is preserved and massive forestation will be taken up in non-forest area to meet the commercial and domestic requirements.

Forest minister C H Vijayshankar, who was in Dharwad to launch a mega afforestation programme, told reporters four main schemes would be implemented under the project.

The first scheme is the Agro Forest Development Scheme where the department would provide various varieties of saplings as per the demands of farmers to be planted on their lands. Local varieties like mango, Indian gooseberry, tamarind and Pongamia Pinnata (Honge) along with herbal and medicinal plants have been identified for distribution.

The department would provide the maintenance expenses of Rs 10 per sapling to the farmers in the first year and Rs 15 and Rs 20 in the subsequent years. Officials would visit the gram panchayat and nada kacheri offices to enroll farmers under this scheme. A demand survey for three years would be carried out soon, he said.

Under the second scheme, each district will get a tree park on 250 acres where the highly-degraded forest land would be developed. This includes improving the soil condition and growing local and traditional species, Ayurvedic and herbal trees, endangered species, wild fruits and flowering trees. Sanjeevani Park and Gulnal in Dharwad, Binkadkatti in Gadag and Karjagi in Haveri districts have been identified for the purpose and the scheme would be set in motion in July.

There were plans to incorporate the Rishi Vana and Nakshatra Vana conceived by former forest department secretary Yellappa Reddy. He developed a 400-acre ‘Pavitra Vana’ near Ramanagaram, Vijayshankar said.

Under another scheme ‘Deva Vana’ the forestation work would be carried out at select religious places on the lines of the greenery project on Thirumala hills. A religious place in each district would be selected for the purpose.