Haritha Haram not a grand success, reveals report
HYDERABAD: Despite the State government’s huge claims of success regarding its afforestation scheme — Telangana ku Haritha Haram — seven other states performed better than Telangana in the India State of Forest Report-2019 (IFSR), released on Monday by the Forest Survey of India. The IFSR is released once in two years. A comparison of IFSR-2017 and IFSR-2019 reveals that Telangana recorded a positive change in forest cover over an area of just 163 square kilometres (sq km).
The IFSR is prepared using satellite data. While IFSR-2017 report was based on satellite data from year 2015, the IFSR-2019 report is based on satellite data obtained from 2017. By the end of 2017, the forest department had claimed to have planted around 72 crore saplings in the state across three phases of Haritha Haram, apart from taking up forest regeneration works to increase vegetation cover inside forests.
However, apart from a minuscule rise in forest cover in the State, Telangana also recorded one of the lowest tree cover outside forest areas in the country. According to the report, trees cover only 4.3 per cent of the State’s geographical area outside the forests.
Compared to Telangana, neighbouring Karnataka recorded the highest improvement in forest cover among all states, of 1,025 sq km, followed by Andhra Pradesh at 990 sq km. Other states that performed better are Kerala(823 sq km), erstwhile Jammu and Kashmir state (371 sq km), Himachal Pradesh (334 sq km), Assam (222 sq km) and Odisha (274 sq km). According to the IFSR-2019, the forest cover in Telangana stands at 20,582 sq km, which is 18.36 percent of the total geographic area of the state (1,12,077 sq km).