Forest cover in 9 hill districts reduced: ISFR
Source: Chronicle News Service
Imphal, March 24 2023:
As per the latest edition of the India State of Forest Report (ISFR), there was reduction of 492 square kilometres of forest cover in nine hill districts of Manipur from the year 2011 to 2021 .
Apart from mentioning that Manipur's total geographical area is 22,327 sqkm and has nine hill districts, the report said that total forest cover in nine hill districts of the state as per ISFR-2011 was 17,090 sqkm but the forest cover has been reduced to 16,598 sqkm in ISFR-2021 thereby showing a reduction of 492 sqkm.
Overall forest cover of Manipur as per the ISFR-2017 was 17,346 sqkm but reduced to 16,847 sqkm in ISFR-2019 and further to 16,598 sqkm in ISFR-2021 .
Overall reduction of forest cover in the state from the year 2017 to 2019 was 499 sqkm and 249 sqkm from the year 2019 to 2021 .
Biennial assessment of forest cover in India is being conducted by an organisation under the ministry of environment, forest and climate change and overall forest cover in the country increased by 5,516 sqkm from ISFR 2017 to ISFR-2021.As per the report, there has been reduction of forest cover in all the hill districts of 10 states of Himalayan and NE states except the increase of 5,331 sqkm in 22 hill districts of Jammu & Kashmir and 61 sqkm in one hill district of West Bengal.
The report also mentioned that there has been reduction of 979 sqkm forest cover in 16 hill districts of Arunachal Pradesh between 1SFR-2017 and ISFR-2021 .