RAIPUR: ‘The forester’s foot is best manure for the forest,’ so the saying goes. True to the word, foresters in Chhattisgarh have demonstrated how high-tech surveillance and decisive action can bring a paradigm shift in forest conservation, reclaiming nearly 1,800 acres of forest from the clutches of encroachment in the Udanti-Sitanadi Tiger Reserve (USTR).
Regaining the vast forest terrain — progressively occupied over the past 18 years — proved quite a task for the Chhattisgarh forest department as it painstakingly identified and cleared designated forestlands, worth over `500 crore, of illegal occupation, said Varun Jain (IFS) Deputy Director, USTR.
Combating biodiversity threats, deforestation, loss of wildlife habitat and increased human-animal conflict, the officer deployed technological interventions to fill up patrolling gaps, reduce man-animal contact and strengthen monitoring of forests and wildlife.
As many as seven major human settlements were cleared out and over 300 encroachers illegally occupying the region were evicted amid strong resistance during the anti-encroachment drive that began two years ago.
Jain took help of the National Remote Sensing Centre, a key facility of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), and acquired satellite images of the designated forestlands in 2008-2010, besides drone mapping of the encroached area to assess the 2022 situation. Analysis of the images revealed that forest cover loss began after 2012 and continued till 2020, during which the encroachers wiped-off trees from vast stretched of jungle.
“It’s an exceptional feat for the state. Removal of encroachments using technology and force has created inviolate space for herbivores and carnivores, leading to diminishing man-animal conflicts. The compensation burden on the state exchequer has also reduced”, said V Sreenivasa Rao (PCCF & Head of Forest Force).
In 2022, the Chhattisgarh forest department built its own Google Earth-powered Remote Sensing Portal for assessing changes in forest cover and surface water cover on a weekly basis; Artificial Intelligence tools and machine learning helped identify forest loss over past 20 years.
Based on the satellite images, the department arrived at the conclusion that all these illegal settlements had come up after 2008, and therefore, were not entitled to land rights under the Forest Rights Act (FRA) which is applicable on areas occupied before December 2005.