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Encroachment on forests lands

Kashmir Times. Dated: 5/30/2016 11:20:15 AM

If government and its agencies cannot protect its forests, the natural resources of J&K are in for a doom threatening human habitations

Illegal encroachments on forest lands by different user agencies for development purposes and by human populations across Jammu and Kashmir appear to have assumed alarming proportions if the official figures doled out by the forest department are to be believed. In fact, the forest audit completed by the state government till June 2014 points out that there has been almost 9 fold increase in encroachments on the forest lands in a decade between 2003 and 2012. This phenomenon may be the highest in recent decades if the figures officially given out by the forest department are taken into consideration and comparative study is carried out over the past one century. The situation on encroachment of wetlands is no different as the lakes and waterways in the naturally blessed J&K have also been taken over for different uses by the human populations living in their catchment areas. The populations living within the water bodies are also indulging in similar tactics for increasing the agricultural production for meeting their daily requirements leading shrinkage of lakes and waterways. It is surprising that the forest department itself says that forest lands have been taken over by different government agencies for development purposes and non-forestry uses. It also justifies that such uses are mandated by the decisions of the government which allowed transfer of land from forests to other uses. Its sanction comes from no less an agency than the council of cabinet ministers of the day. How this is done and how far it is justified is a question which does not get many answers. So far as transfer of similar and equal areas for conversion as forests by the concerned agencies known as Compensatory Afforestation is another thing when it is compared to hosting fauna and flora of the natural forest covers. The CA scheme of things of the government has never been able to convert non-forest lands into forests through artificial measures because the natural fauna and flora cannot be hosted there.
Now it is for the government and its agencies to check encroachment of forest lands by different agencies as also ensure that forests rehabilitation process is not only difficult but also impossible. The coverage of non-forest lands by artificial measures has never been a practical realty. If the government is allowing conversion of forests lands into non-forest spaces then the people living around and amidst forests are not at fault if they are using the forests for their daily supplies. But the larger question remains unanswered for the reasons best known to the government agencies when the wildlife attacks on the human habitations are attributed shrinking of habitat for the wild animals. At this point, the government agencies blame the people living around forests for attracting the attacks from the wild animals with the reason that human settlements are too close to the forests. So such arguments have created a piquant situation particularly when the pressure on the natural resources is increasing due to population explosion and increasing needs of the human habitations. This has naturally led to interference in the wildlife enclosures and encroachment on the wildlife habitat without sparing a thought for flora and fauna of the forests. Apart from this indiscriminate felling of green trees is also leading to denuding of forests in and around the small towns and villages, which also depend on forests for their daily needs ranging from fuel wood to agricultural produce on the fields retrieved from the forests by the increasing human populations. It will not be out of place to mention that despite having stringent laws to protect forests, violations have been going on unabated due to political pressure from the politicians and influential forest lessees, who have made fortunes from felling trees and indiscriminate exploitation of forest resources with sanction and active connivance of the politicians, who rule the roost in the successive governments in J&K over the past more than half a century.