Uttarakhand is losing about 45 hectares of forest every month, either to fire or to development projects like road construction, a state government report has
estimated.

The report has indicated that about 1,978 hectares of forestland in the hill state have been destroyed in fires in recent years.

“We all know that 71 per cent of the hill state is covered by forest. But the speed at which we are losing forest cover may affect lives here drastically,” said an officer involved in the survey who didn’t want to be named.

“While we are devising strategies to stop landslides and spending hundreds of crores on treatment to prevent hill erosion, we are not focusing on the reasons behind these calamities. All this will stop to a large extent if we preserve our forests somehow.”

“We cannot compete with the development in other states because Uttarakhand is a very small hill-and-forest state,” the officer added.

Uttarakhand’s total geographical area is about 53,483sqkm, of which about 37,999sqkm is forest land.

The state forest department has 25,863sqkm of forest area under it, while 4,768sqkm is managed by the revenue department and 7,168sqkm by village panchayats. The rest is in private hands.

There is every possibility that the trend of decreasing forests will continue in the coming years, administrative sources said.

Pankaj Kumar Pandey, the public works department secretary, recently prepared a report that said that forestland had not been given for 500 projects in the last decade despite in-principle agreements with the forest department for road construction. He has asked PWD engineers to quickly resolve the deadlock.

There are 1,271 upcoming road projects in the state, among which 268 have received forest department permission. Acquisition of forestland is going on. The government has given consent for 571 projects in principle, but the forest department has yet to approve them. The rest are at the level of planning.

According to Uttarakhand forest department sources, 1,138 hectares of forestland were given to various departments in 2020-2021 for development projects. Another 524 hectares were given in 2021-22 and 961 hectares in 2022-23. Seventeen hectares of forestland have been handed over to these departments so far this year.

Ranjan Mishra, the nodal officer for the transfer of forestland, told reporters: “The agency which acquires forestland pays a cost to the forest department and also bears the expenses for growing trees on an equal area somewhere else.”