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Forest Department
The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) has cited many loopholes in the management of compensatory afforestation funds in the forest divisions of Uttarakhand, including their diversion to inadmissible activities and delayed submission of annual plan of operations to the Centre leading to cost escalations in various cases. The CAG's latest audit report on Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) laid recently in Uttarakhand Assembly during its ongoing budget session said Rs 13.86 crore was diverted at the divisional level to inadmissible activities like state scheme Harela, tiger safari work, renovation of existing buildings, expenses on personage visits, court cases, purchases of I-phones, laptops, fridges, coolers and stationery. The state authority did not control the diversion or inadmissible expenditure from the State Compensatory Afforestation Fund, it said. The audit report on the functioning of CAMPA covers a period of ...
Several experts have claimed that the latest government data on India's forests is "inflated" as it includes bamboo plantations, coconut groves, and orchards among others as part of the forest cover. The 'India State of Forests Report 2023' released on Saturday, after a delay of almost a year, said India's total forest and tree cover has increased by 1,445 sq km since 2021, reaching 25.17 per cent of the total geographical area in 2023. However, the forest cover grew by just 156 sq km and most of the gain (149 sq km) occurred outside the Recorded Forest Area (RFA), which refers to areas designated as forests in government records. The overall results could have been stronger, especially since the government included bamboo and smaller trees (5-10 cm diameter at breast height) in the tree cover estimates for ISFR 2023. The assessment also expanded to 751 districts, up from 636 in 2021. Experts including Kerala's former principal chief conservator of forests Prakriti Srivastava, ...
Authorities evacuated at least 1,200 people on Saturday as a wildfire in Los Angeles County spread over thousands of acres near a major highway and threatened nearby structures, officials said. The blaze being called the Post Fire burned more than 3,600 acres (5.6 square miles or 14.5 square kilometers) near the Interstate 5 freeway in Gorman, about 62 miles (100 kilometers) northwest of Los Angeles, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. California State Park Services evacuated 1,200 people from the Hungry Valley recreation area in Gorman and both Hungry Valley and the Pyramid Lake reservoir were closed as a result of the fire threat, the Los Angeles County Fire Department said in an 8 p.m. update. The flames broke out at around 1:45 pm, authorities said. The fire was moving southeast toward Pyramid Lake and crews were constructing perimeter fire lines while aircraft worked against limited visibility to stop the fire's progress, the fire department
The Kerala High Court has directed the state government to ensure no trees on roadsides are felled merely because they obstruct commercial activities. The High Court said that trees can be cut and removed only if they are in damaged condition and as a result pose a danger to public safety. A decision regarding that should be taken by a committee constituted in accordance with a 2010 government order regulating the felling and disposal of trees growing on government lands, Justice P V Kunhikrishnan said. "Without such a decision, no trees on the roadside of the State shall be cut and removed by any authorities. The Chief Secretary of the State shall issue necessary orders to that effect. "...the State of Kerala should see that no request to cut and remove trees on the roadsides of the State can be permitted without sufficient reasons. Trees give cool shades, pure oxygen and shelter to birds and animals," the court said in its order of May 22. The court's ruling came while dismissin
More than 50 lakh large farmland trees vanished between 2018 and 2022 in India, partly due to altered cultivation practices, revealing a "concerning trajectory," new research published in the journal Nature Sustainability has found. Researchers said that "an observable trend was emerging" wherein agroforestry systems are being replaced with paddy rice fields, even as a certain loss rate could be found to be natural. Large and mature trees within these agroforestry fields are removed, and trees are now being cultivated within separate block plantations typically with lower ecological value, they said. Block plantations, usually involving fewer species of trees, were found to have increased in numbers which some villagers from Telangana, Haryana, Maharashtra and other states confirmed via interviews. The team, including researchers from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, explained that the decision to remove trees is often driven by perceived low benefits of the trees, coupled wi
The Odisha government has asked the Forest and Agriculture departments to take up massive palm tree plantation as an effective mitigation measure to avoid death of people due to lightning strike in rural areas. The decision in this regard was taken at an inter-departmental meeting convened by Special Relief Commissioner (SRC) Satyabrata Sahu. "Inter-departmental meeting held by SRC for undertaking disaster resilient projects under Disaster Mitigation Fund. @ForestDeptt & @krushibibhag asked to take up massive Palm tree plantation in reserve forest area and other vulnerable districts as a #Lightning mitigation measures," the SRC said in a post in X. The SRC's decision came in the wake of many people, mostly farmers losing their lives due to lightning strikes while working in agricultural fields. As many as 281 lightning deaths were reported in 2021-22, most of them from rural areas. Stating that environmentalists and weather experts have opined that rampant felling of palm trees ...
The survival rate of transplanted trees in Delhi drastically comes down after the first year due to multiple reasons, including limitations of the tree transplantation policy, the city government's Forest department found during an in-house audit conducted recently. The tree survival rate after one year of transplantation is up to 90 per cent. It drastically drops to 38 per cent after three years, a senior Forest department official, requesting anonymity, told PTI. Data collected after a preliminary audit and submitted to Delhi High Court in May last year showed that only 33.33 per cent of the 16,461 trees transplanted in the national capital over the preceding three years had survived. The Delhi government's tree transplantation policy states that agencies concerned must transplant a minimum 80 per cent of the trees affected by its development works. The benchmark tree survival rate at the end of one year of transplantation is 80 per cent. A three-member committee set up to identi
Salt pan workers on Friday protested against notices issued to them by the forest department for eviction from a wildlife sanctuary in Little Rann of Kutch (LRK) in Gujarat and submitted a memorandum to the collector of Surendranagar. A part of the LRK, which is a salt marsh, falls in Surendranagar district and is protected as a wild ass sanctuary. "More than 400 Agariyas, or salt farmers, gathered outside the district collector's office at Patdi here and submitted a memorandum and raised slogans against the move by the state forest department to evict them. They also accused the forest department of damaging and confiscating their solar panels used to make salt," an official said. The salt farmers have sought that the state government protect their traditional livelihood and have alleged only small farmers were being targeted, while bigger units were left untouched, he said. The memorandum of the NGO Agariya Heet Rakshak Manch marked for state forest minister Mulu Bera claimed the
The Kerala government on Tuesday said its intention was to try limiting buffer zones within forest regions and that it was also considering a field survey of affected areas to resolve concerns of the public on the issue. Speaking to reporters at Thiruvananthapuram after meeting major archbishop-catholicos of the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church, Baselios Cleemis, Kerala Transport Minister Antony Raju and state Water Minister Roshi Augustine said the Left government's intention was to try and limit buffer zones within the forests. The ministers, while downplaying the meeting with Cardinal Cleemis as casual, said the government was also considering carrying out field surveys of the areas where buffer zones have to be implemented in accordance with the Supreme Court directions. They met the Cardinal hours before the high level meeting, called by Vijayan on Monday, to be held in the afternoon. The high level meeting will be chaired by the CM and would comprise the state Ministers of ...