Good news for Greens: Forest cover grows

There’s good news and bad news for environmentalists. The good news is India’s forest cover has grown, though marginally, between 2005 and 2007. The bad news, it has declined in several states and union territories. The worst-performing states, according to India State of Forest Report 2009, are Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Nagaland and Tripura. And the reasons for the decline, inter alia, are departmental felling of eucalyptus plantations, mining, encroachment in insurgency-affected states and shifting cultivations for the decline.

Minister for environment and forests Jairam Ramesh, who released the report on Monday, said the assessment was fairly accurate since the ministry, for the first time, used remote sensors to map forests and matched the data with information gathered on the ground. The forest cover has grown to 6,90,899 (0.11%) square km from 6,90,171 square km between 2005- 2007.

“The accuracy of the forest cover is 95.72%,” he said, adding that 4,302 points were randomly selected and verified by experts.