Question

write a brief note on forest resources of Indian?
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Answer 1

Explanation:

Introduction to Current Status of Forest Resources:

There are various forest types throughout the globe.

Primarily forest types and species compo­sition varies with climate, soil types and other geomorphic features of the locations.

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In tropics, for­est diversity is much more with respect to temper­ate or polar regions.

An over view of global forest cover area is shown in the Table 6.1.

Forest cover and per capita availability in different regions/countries

India has 67.55 million hectares of recorded forest area (2000). This accounts for 20.55% of total geographic area. Per capita availability of forests in India is 0.06 ha which is much lower than the world average of 0.64 ha. The distribution of forest cover area state wise/UTS of India is shown in Table 6.2.

Distribution of recorded forest area in state/uts

Distribution of recorded forest area in state/uts

Resource Exploitation:

Forest has multipurpose utility and direct use value. Many useful products obtained from trees of forest (Fig. 6.2). Tropical forest constitute about 6% of the earth’s land area. But since 1950s, such forest cover has been vanish­ing very rapidly.

The most widely accepted current estimate is that the world is losing remaining tropi­cal forests at a rate of at least 154,000 sq kilometer per year—equivalent to about 34 city blocks per minute, or almost two football fields per seconds.

It is also estimated that an equivalent area of these forests is seriously degraded without being destroyed outright each year. In some place deforestation for resource exploitation is so high, that as a result coun­try like Haiti has lost 98° o of its original forest cover, the Philippines 97% and Madagascar 84%.

Some of the many useful products obtained from trees

Tropical forests touch the daily lives everyone on the earth through the products and ecological services they provide. These forests supply half of the world’s annual harvest of hardwood, hun­dreds of food products (coffee, tea, cocoa, spices, nuts, chocolate, and fruits), and materials such as natural latex rubber, resins, dyes and essential oils that can be harvested sustainably.

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The active in­gredients for 25% of the world’s prescribed drugs are substances derived from plants most of which grow in tropical rain forests. Such drugs are used to treat a huge variety of disease. Commercial sales of drugs with active ingredients derived from tropi­cal forests total an estimated $100 billion per year worldwide.

Environmentalists urge countries to reduce the flow of the landless poor to tropical forests by slowing population growth and discour­aging the poor from migrating to undisturbed tropical forests; and to sharply reduce the poverty that leaves the poor no choice but to use the for­ests unsustainably. Programmes are also needed to help new settlers in tropical forests learn how to practice small-scale sustainable agriculture.

Tropical forest "hotspots"

Eco-restoration of mine areas particularly in opencast mining zone is common practice now a days. In most of the developmental projects soil erosion control, treatment and disposal of tailing waste water, massive afforestation around project area are very common practice.

Micro watershed management is adopted mostly instead of mega dam projects. Air pollutants from industrial areas often caused acid rain and thus damaged the forest area as reported in the past, but now such a situation is widely averted through adoption of appropriate pollution control and greenbelt development.

Forest Produces:

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There are a number of forest produce, available from both natural and plantation forests in addi­tion to timbers and fuel woods. These are mostly designated as non-wood or non-timber forest pro­duce (NWFP/NTFP). The broad categories of such forest produces are listed in Table 6.4.

The rapid destruction of forests for develop­mental works, land conversion, has not only put pressure on forest resources and the forest dwell­ers but also disturb the ecological balance. Since independence, India’s forest depletes severely and thus forest polices has been revised from time to time for better management and protection of forest cover areas.

Tribal rights on NWFP some­time overlooked in many years. As a consequence forest dwelling communities are facing severe eco­nomic constrain for their livelihood.

These are as follows: