How were the principles of scientific forestry implemented in India?
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The Indian Forest Department celebrated its centenary in 1961. A publication brought out by the Forest, Research Institute in this connection declared that, 'Scientific forestry in India is a hundred years old. Regarding the general history of Indian forests prior to this period, it stated:
'The forest extended over most of the country, when the original inhabitants lived mostly as denizens of the forest. With the practice of agriculture came shifting cultivation and gradual destruction of the forests for food and pasture. Even after the advent of the British, in the early days of the establishment of their rule, the accessible forests suffered due to large scale fellings of valuable timber trees. It is only when doubts began to arise whether the timber requirements of the Navy and the Empire would continue to be available without interruption and to the full extent, that the British began to realize that the forests were not so inexhaustible as they were earlier thought to be ... With the initiative taken by Connolly, Collector of Malabar in 1842, to form teak plantations, came the beginning of scientific plantations, came the beginning or scientific forestry in India. The first regular conservator of Forests was appointed in Bombay in 1847 and in Madras in 1856. The foundations of organized forestry were surely and firmly laid when the Government of India appointed Sir Dietrich Brandis as the first Inspector General of Forests of India in the year 1864.'
'The forest extended over most of the country, when the original inhabitants lived mostly as denizens of the forest. With the practice of agriculture came shifting cultivation and gradual destruction of the forests for food and pasture. Even after the advent of the British, in the early days of the establishment of their rule, the accessible forests suffered due to large scale fellings of valuable timber trees. It is only when doubts began to arise whether the timber requirements of the Navy and the Empire would continue to be available without interruption and to the full extent, that the British began to realize that the forests were not so inexhaustible as they were earlier thought to be ... With the initiative taken by Connolly, Collector of Malabar in 1842, to form teak plantations, came the beginning of scientific plantations, came the beginning or scientific forestry in India. The first regular conservator of Forests was appointed in Bombay in 1847 and in Madras in 1856. The foundations of organized forestry were surely and firmly laid when the Government of India appointed Sir Dietrich Brandis as the first Inspector General of Forests of India in the year 1864.'
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The prime aim of Brandis's System of Scientific Forestrywas to restrict felling of trees and grazing, so that forestscould be preserved for timber production.
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