STATE OF FOREST SURVEY (INDIA)

STATE OF FOREST SURVEY (INDIA) 2005 The lOti State of the Forest Report (SFR) 2005 of the Ministry 0 Environment and Forest (MoEF) was released in April 2008 It contains wealth of statistics and spatial information abou forest and tree cover in the country.

Highlights

.India's forest cover is 67.71 million hi (20.60 per cent of geographical area)
. Of this, 5.46 million ha (1.66 per cent) includes vel'; dense forest (VDF), 33.26 million ha (10.12 per cent moderately dense forest (MDF), and the rest 28.29 miliiOl ha (8.82 per cent) includes open forests (OF) including 0.4: million ha mangroves.
. Excluding the areas (18.16 million ha) not availabl, for tree planting/ afforestation due to climate, edaphic anI physical reasons falling in mountainous region under per manent snow, glaciers/rocks; the forest cover of Indi, comes to 21.81 per cent.
. Madhya Pradesh has the largest area of 7.6 milliol ha under forest cover (11.22 per cent of the country followed by Arunachal Pradesh (10.01 per cent) Chhattisgarh (8.25 per cent), Orissa (7.15 per cent), anI Maharashtra (7.01 per cent).
. The seven north-east states together account for 25.1
per cent of the total forests in India.
. In the 124 hill districts of India, the forest cover i 38.85 per cent (52.4 per cent by excluding area unavailabl for planning).
. In the 188 tribal districts of India, the forest cove is 36.81 per cent of geographical area which is 60.11 pe cent of the total forest cover of India.
. The mangrove cover in India is 4,445 sq. km. Of thi1 1.147 sq. km (25.8 per cent) is very dense, 1,629 sq. kr (36.6 per cent) is moderately dense, and the rest 1,669 sc km (37.6 per cent) is open.
. West Bengal has the maximum mangrove cove (47.65 per cent) of the country's total.
. A comparison of the forest covers of India betwee the present and preceding assessment (2003) shows the' there is marginal loss of 728 sq. km during the period 200:< 2004. This constitutes 0.11 per cent of the forest cover c the country.
. The total tree cover of the country has been assesse, as 91,663 (2.79 per cent of geographical area).
. The total forest and tree cover of India has bee assessed as 768,751 sq. km (23.4 per cent of geographic< area and 24.76 per cent excluding area unavailable fCi planting)
.. The total growing stock of wood in India is 6.22 billion mJ.
. The estimate of growing stock of the forest is 4.6 billion mJ. The growing stock of trees outside forests (TOF) has been estimated to be 1.61 billion m3. The average growing stock is 80.9 m3 per ha in 76.88 million ha of forest and tree cover.
. India has lost 728 sq km forest between 2002 and 2004 despite numerous forestry programmes at the Central and state levels.
. Only 23.4 per cent of the total land mass is under fbrest and tree cover, compared to the figure in the 2003 report.

In India, says the Eleventh Plan document, per capita forest- area is only 0.064 ha against the world average of 0.64 ha (FAO). The productivity of our forests is only 1.34 m3/ha/year against the world average of 2.1 m3/ha/year. While 78 per cent of the forest area is subjected to heavy grazing and other unregulated uses, adversely affecting productivity and regeneration, nearly 10 MH of forest area is subjected to shifting cultivation. Land use changes such as diversion of community areas for non-biomass purposes have directed nearly all biomass needs towards forests.