Explore Business Standard
Don’t miss the latest developments in business and finance.
Forests
Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and his cabinet colleagues on Sunday planted saplings at a site where he said the largest man-made forest in the state would come up. The saplings were planted on a plot near the Raja Bhoj Airport here to mark two years of Chouhan's daily plantation drive, which started on this day in 2021 in Amarkantak. "The biggest man made forest with 40,000 trees will be developed at this site and will be monitored by Shri Ram Astha Mission," said Chouhan, who also released a pictorial book about his daily plantation drive. "Madhya Pradesh will play a key role to achieve the goal of net zero emissions by the year 2070 set by Prime Minister Narendra Modi," said Chouhan.
Forest cover in Telangana increased by 6.85 per cent during 2015 to 2021 period, according to the Telangana Socio Economic Outlook 2023. The India State of Forest Reports has stated that the forest cover in Telangana was 19,854 sq km in 2015, which subsequently increased to 20,582 sq km in 2019 and to 21,214 sq kms in 2021, registering a remarkable increase of 6.85 per cent in forest cover from 2015 to 2021, the survey brought out by the government mentioned. Hyderabad registered the highest decadal growth rate of forest cover at 146.8 per cent between 2011-21 among the seven major cities of Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai, it said. Telangana has a total forest area of 26,969.61 sq km, accounting for 24.06 per cent of the total geographical area of the state, said the survey, which was released by the state government here two days ago. Telangana is endowed with a rich diversity of flora and fauna with over 2,939 plant species, 365 bird species, 103 mammal
An eviction drive to clear over 500 hectares of forest land in Assam's Lakhimpur district, affecting nearly 100 families, will be undertaken by the administration on Tuesday, officials said. A mock drill by security forces for the eviction drive was conducted on Sunday, they said. Out of 2,560.25 hectares of Pava reserved forest, only 29 hectares are currently free of any encroachment. In the first phase, 500 hectares in Adhasona and Mohaghuli villages will be cleared in the January 10 exercise, the officials said. The Himanta Biswa Sarma-led dispensation has been carrying out eviction drives in different places in the state since it assumed power in May 2021, with two such exercises undertaken last month. The one in Nagaon's Batadrava on December 19 was billed as one of the largest in the region in terms of the number of people affected, uprooting more than 5,000 alleged encroachers. Among the other major eviction drives was one in Dhalpur area of Darrang district which led to ..
About 69 per cent of the soil in Jharkhand's forest areas has turned unfit for plant growth due to acute deficiency of nitrogen, as per a latest report. The findings were revealed in the Forest Soil Health Card (FSHC) report prepared by the Ranchi-based Institute of Forest Productivity (IFP) upon the direction of the Union Ministry of Forest and Environment, a senior official said. There is a major deficiency of nitrogen, which is vital for plant growth, in the forest soil of the state. The presence of nitrogen in non-degraded forest should be around 258 kg per hectare, but we find it at an average of 140 kg per hectare in Jharkhand's forest soil, IFP Chief Technical Officer Shambhu Nath Mishra told PTI. Most of the forest divisions are having presence of nitrogen between 160 kg and 180 kg per hectare. In quite a few ares, the figure is near 100 kg per hectare, Mishra, who is also the principal investigator of the project, said. Jharkhand on Friday became the first state in the ...