HYDERABAD: Despite the innumerous campaigns by both the government and NGOs to protect the nature and wildlife, the forest cover in both Andhra Pradesh and Telangana states continues to shrink every year.
According to the findings of the state forest department’s annual report -2013 by the united AP government, so far 10,815 acres of forest cover had been encroached, out of which around 1,800 acres disappeared in 2013 alone. The major cause for this drastic reduction of forest land range from natural disasters like cyclones, fire accidents and illegal encroachments. However, the survey identified that the development projects like reservoirs and mining projects in forest areas as the cause for deforestation while man-made damages are also contributing on a big scale to the destruction. The Telangana government has recently allotted around 108 hectares of forest land to Singareni Collieries in Adilabad district. Apart from this, growing smuggling activities in reserved forest areas have become a new headache for the forest officials. An official from Telangana forest department said, smuggling and mining activities were causing more damage than accidents like wildfires. ‘’The damage by fire accidents will be covered in few months or years, but the man-made damage is hard to repair,” the official said.
Khammam forest division tops the list by losing a whopping 4,237 acres of forest cover so far while Warangal division comes next which lost 2,703 acres. The survey in 2013 was carried out by the united AP government, and the survey-2014 is still under progress. This time both AP and TS will make separate annual reports with their respective forest divisions.