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Trees have a rightful place in the general economy of the country. Forestry is not a mere handmaid of agriculture but an inexhaustible reserve for providing subsistence to our growing millions. For, “Trees mean water, water means bread, and bread is life.” The Puranas, rightly said that, “One tree is equal to ten sons. And what a son ! he gives moisture to land, gives breeze and shade; saves land from erosion, gives dry leaves for compost and rich fruits for food – What a son ! he wants care and water but for five years, wants no milk, no nurse.”
Forests are indispensable for the national development and fully grown-up civilisation. “Indeed civilisation has been nursed, nourished and grown to manhood in the regions of temperate natural vegetation.” A Fresh proverb rightly says, “Forests precede civilisation but deserts succeed them.”
To an agricultural country like India, their importance can hardly be exaggerated. It has been observed in the tenth Five-Year Plan that forests meet nearly 40 per cent of the country’s energy needs and 30 per cent of the fodder needs. It is estimated that about 270 million tonnes of fuel wood, 280 million tonnes of fodder, over 12 million cubic metre of timber and countless non-wood forest product are removed from the forest annually.
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Benefits of Forests:
1. Direct Benefits:
(i) Although the productive functions of forests in India are not prima facie, as important as the protective functions, still they are not negligible. Contribution of forestry towards national income is increasing gradually. Forest wealth of India contributed about 0.86 per cent towards the Gross Domestic production in 1970-71. The contribution of Forestry increased to 1.8 per cent in 1990-91. The upward trend is due to planned management of the forest produce.
The reported value of forests was only 1.4 percent in national counts towards net domestic product during 2000-01. It has been observed that it is an underestimate of the contribution of the forests as the value of environmental services provided by the forests are not yet considered. A study reveals that forests in India represent a huge resource in economic terms. It’s all direct benefits are accounted for forest resources, contribute around 2.9 percent to the adjusted Net Domestic Product for the country as a whole.
(ii) They provide fodder for about 179 million cattle, 58 million buffaloes and 120 million other livestock. They are the homes of 500 types of animals. They provide edible fruits and roots of which the poor readily avail themselves.
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(iii) They provide whole time daily employment to about 15 lakh persons engaged as wood-cutters, sawyers, carters, and craftsmen and in other related forest industries.
(iv) They are also the homes of India’s submerged humanity—the tribals numbering 38 lakhs. They are ecologically and economically a part and parcel of the forest environment.
(v) Indian flora is rich in composition and value. India has 5,000 species of wood, of which about 450 are commercially valuable and are used for extracting acetic acid, acetone, methyl alcohol, certain oils, creosote and valuable drags like sulphonamide and chloroform. The total standing volume of timber in the country is 85,696 m. cu metres of which 93 per cent are non-coniferous and 7 per cent are coniferous.
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India’s forests provided annually about 192 lakh cu. metres of timber and firewood valued at Rs59 crores in 1964-65; 228 lakh cu. metres valued at Rs.91 crores in 1970-71 ; 229 lakh cu. metres valued at Rs.122 crores in 1972-73 and 165 lakh cu. metres valued at Rs.179 crores in 1974-75.
(vi) Forests provide raw materials for a number of industries, viz.. broom making, silk worm rearing, lac, toy making, leaf plate making, sawmills, match, plywood, paper and pulp, pencil making, tea chest, fibre board, chipboard, etc.
(vii) They also provide major and minor forest produce, such as, timber, round wood, pulp-wood, charcoal, fire-wood and minor produce like bamboos, canes, drugs, spices, edible fruits and vegetables, fibres and flosses, fodder and grazing grasses, gums and resins, rubber and latex, incense and perfume woods, dyeing and tanning materials, bidileaves, vegetable oils and oil-seeds, sandal wood, oil, lac, ivory, honey, bees-wax, myrobolans, cutch and kutha, essential aromatic oil grasses like lemon grass, rosha grass, munj grass, khas, tiger grass, etc. Medicinal herbs like atropa, sarsaparila, chinchona mentha-rauvofolia, Shinali Mingli, datura, colchicum luteum, ephedra, physochlainapaelia, Japanese mint, belladona, nux vomica, aconite, tyoscyamens etc. value of minor produce exceed Rs.50 crores per year.
The most important varieties of timber produced in the forests are- semal, kikar, babul, deodar, sissoo, sal, chir pine, blue pine, mango, teak, haldu, mulberry, etc.
Exploitation of forest produce has increased at a very fast rate during the plan period. Major forest products of the country are timber, round wood, pulp and matchwood, fuel-wood and charcoal wood. Quantity of major forest products was 15,791 thousand cubic metres in 1950-51. It increased to 21,481 thousand cubic metres in 1979-80.
The woods of India cover almost every commercial use, aeroplane, agricultural implements, axe and tool handles, bentwood articles, boat and ship building, bobbins, boot laces, brushes, buildings, carts and carriages, construction and general joinery work, co-operage, electric transmission poles, engraving and printing marine piles and harbour work, match splints and boxes, mathematical instruments, packing cases and boxes, pencils and penholders, picker arms, picture framing, plywood and lamin boards, railway carriages and railway keys and brake blocks, railway sleepers, rifle parts and gunstocks, road-paving blocks, shuttles, sports goods, tent poles and tent pegs, turnery, umbrella, pen and walking sticks.
Forests are the source of various major and minor forest produce. It has been estimated that withdrawal of forest products are much beyond the carrying capacity of our forests. The current annual withdrawal of fuel wood is estimated at 235 million cubic meters against a sustainable capacity of about 48 million cubic metres. The annual demand for industrial wood is about 28 million cubic metres against the production capacity of 12 million cubic metres.
Table given below shows quantity of timber and other major forest produce in India:
In 1950-51 the forests provided major produce worth Rs.190.9 million, in 1960-61 it was worth Rs.495.0 million. Value of the major forest produce increased to about Rs.3,276 million in 1979-80. There has been continuous increase in the value of minor forest produce. In 1950-51 the forests provided minor produce worth Rs.69.2 million, the value of minor forest produce increased to Rs.1363.4 in 1979-80. Total forest produce including major and minor produce increased from Rs.260.1 million to Rs.5131.5 million during 1950-51 to 1979-80. Table above shows the value of major and minor forest produce.
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Non Timber Forest Produce-NTFP:
NTFPs are very important gift of the forest wealth. Almost all important-NTFPs such as bamboo, sal seeds, tendu leaves are nationalised. These can be sold to government agencies. Nationalisation of NTFP was done in different states during 1960-70. The basic objective of nationalisation on NTFP was to help the poor. But the policy was much beneficial for the poor’s because it reduces the number of legal buyers. It creates obstacle in free flow of goods.
2. Indirect Benefits:
Forests offer many indirect benefits to the country such as:
(i) They render the climate more equable and increase the relative humidity of the atmosphere and increase the precipitation of the moisture.
(ii) They regulate water supply, produce a sustained feeding of springs and tend to reduce the violent floods and make the flow of water in the rivers continuous.
(iii) Defending the land against the evil of erosion, aridity and climate excesses, forests perform services no less valuable and no more expressible in terms of money than those rendered by the defence force of a country.
(iv) Forests are homes of rich and varied wild life. They provide natural habitat for hill and mountain fauna. About 500 types of mammals live in Indian Forest. Lion, tiger, wild ass, panthers, barasingha, sambhar, nilgai, elephant, cheeta, chinkara, wild buffaloes, one horned rhinoceros, black buck, musk deer, different types of birds, snakes, etc., abound in Indian forests. In these forests exist national parks (Corbett, Kanha, Taroba, Palamau, and Hazaribagh), while notable sanctuaries are Kaziranga, Manas, Jaldaparara, Sirisha, Gir, Jai Samudra, Periyar and Dachigam.
(v) Numerous worms, insects and minute organisms feed on the humus and tunnel in the soil, thus making it suitable as a food for the plants.
(vi) Decomposing leaves of trees increase the permeability of soil and improve its chemical and physical characteristics.
(vii) Forests serve as strong line of defence and as a cover against aerial reconnaissance and attack. Use of artillery at close range and a free operation of mechanical units becomes extremely difficult in forests.
In brief “the trees have a great place in the economy of Nature. They hold up the mountains, they cushion the rain and storm, they discipline the rivers, they control the floods, they maintain the springs, they break the winds, they foster the birds, they keep the air cool and clean, they are the guardians of the perennial springs of water, they are the natural defenders of dust storms, they prevent erosion, they provide the fuel and timber. They make the hydro-electric scheme possible and they give us a host of other products. ”
Woytinsky and Woytinsky have rightly observed- “the protection forests afford in retarding the water run-off, in distributing rainfall, preventing erosion, reducing wind damage and safeguarding water supplies is often valued more than their output of woods.”
Forests, thus, constitute one of the most renewable natural resources.
Low Productivity of Forests and its Causes:
Indian forests are rich in varied resources but their productivity is very low. For example, in productive areas in well maintained forests, yield of about 2.75 tons per acre per annum is obtained of sal; of 4.10 tons of deodar and 1.30 tons of chir. The average per hectare production per annum of forests in India is estimated at about 0.53 cu. metres as against the world average of 2 cu. m.
Further, on an average the growing stock per capita of the forest, in use is only 5.2 cu. metres as against 12.3 cu. metres for Asia. 24.0 cu. metres for Europe. 320 cu. metres for U. S. S. R. 94.2 cu. metres for U.S.A. and 46.7 cu. metres for the world. Per hectare, the growing stock is only 28 cu. metres and the average annual increment is only 0.5 cu. metre per hectare against the world average of 2.0 cu. metres and our estimated potential of 5.0 cu. metres.
Table given above shows the gap between supply and demand for the forest produce in the country. This requires extensive and intensive development programme for the development of the forest wealth in the country.
The revenue from India’s forests has so far been very negligible. The national average gross revenue per hectare from India’s productive forests is only Rs.21.50. The income from India’s forest land, when compared with that in other countries of the world, will appear to be dismally low as is evident from the table.
Our productivity is about one-twentieth of that in the European countries and about one-tenth less of our potential productivity.
This is due to a number of factors such as:
(i) Large area of unclassed State forests and the former private forests, acquired by the Government after the abolition of zamindari, are under-stocked and require to be rehabilitated. The difficulty in organizing the commercial exploitation of these products arise from their erratic distribution. Some products like Ephedra, Ratanjot, and Kuth occur at high elevations. Myrobolans are usually dispersed over extensive areas rendering the cost of collection prohibitive. Herbs suffer from the same handicap.
(iii) Customary forest rights and concessions granted to the tribals and forest people for the grazing of their cattle in the forests and removing timber, fuel and manure and minor forest produce have been very liberally exercised by them for a long time and this has led to the reduction of forest yield. Further, in the unreserved forests and the forests managed by the Revenue Department, cultivation has long been permitted and this has heavily encroached upon the forest land.
(iii) The utilisation of forest trees for fuel and charcoal is a wasteful method and leaves much to be desired.
(iv) The large animal population reduces the possibility of efficient forest management, preservation and expansion through afforestation.
(v) Some of the forest (about 43 per cent) have yet been opened up sufficiently and therefore, only the most valuable trees can be extracted economically, others go to waste. Besides very few types in Indian forests are gregarious to enable their economical exploitation.
(vi) An appreciable proportion of trees are malformed or consist of species which are slow growing and poor yielders.
(vii) Antiquated transport and lack of proper bridle paths-rope ways and the road system in the forest areas are other bottlenecks in the full utilization of resources.
(viii) The methods of felling, fashioning and slow means of transportation entail much wastage and the costs are also high.
(ix) Large quantities of inferior woods which could be put to economic use through seasoning and preservation treatment remain only partially utilised.
(x) There are no commercial forests and most of the forests are meant for protective purposes. Reserved forests represent 48 per cent- Protected forests 32 per cent and unclassified forests 20 per cent. Protected and unclassified forests are forests in name only.
(xi) The yield from forest is low because static conservancy (or natural growth of forests) is even now practised. This has its importance when scientific management had just begun. But now it is not suitable.
(xii) There are over one million hectares of over-aged inaccessible forests in H. P. and U. P. in remote areas which are deteriorating and await immediate exploitation. The stands in these forest areas are good and valuable, they need good management practices.
(xiii) Many aspects of wood possess such defects as excessive sharpness, heaviness, twisted grains, brittleness, presence of oils or abrasive materials, poor seasoning ability and impregnation qualities which have rendered them economically useless.
(xiv) Lastly, inadequate protection against fire, plant diseases, insects, lack of complete information regarding timber supplies and other forest resources, inadequate research facilities and insufficiency of trained personnel are other factors which militate against full production.
The obvious requirement, therefore, is to undertake silvicultural operations on a much wider scale.
Increased output can be obtained from year to year through:
(i) Adoption of intensive development schemes including the planting of quick growing, suitable and high yielding species-indigenous or exotic in compact blocks in suitable locations
(ii) Selection of high yield areas;
(iii) Introduction of improved techniques of logging and extraction; anisotropic
(iv) Development of forest communications for opening the hitherto inaccessible forests;
(v) Increased use of preservation and seasoning processes by establishing preservation plant and seasoning kilns in the heart of the forest area;
(vi) The linking of forest programme with the schemes of industrial development;
(vii) Protecting forests from depleting forces fires, adopting quarantine measures air dusting and spraying; and
(viii) Undertaking a reliable inventory of forest resources, their extent, location, volume, composition, standing wood volume, rate of growth and the quantities of various products, at which these could be procured by industries, statistics of removal, employment opportunities, trade prospects and consumption of forest products.
Forest Management Planning:
Forests are a renewable resource. Forest management and development planning should aim at utilising the available forest resources and simultaneous regenerating the forest of the species, similar to the existing ones or quicker grown, more valuable and suitable for a particular site. An objective of forest management is to ensure at least sustained and generally increasing yields of forest products in perpetuity.
For this, it is necessary to safeguard that the site quality of any particular forest does not deteriorate. The other objective is the maximisation of benefits in order to ensure physical protection and simultaneously to produce the most needed species.