Forest Cover in Odisha has improved in last two years: Naveen

Bhubaneswar, May 12: Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik Thursday asked the forest officers to prepare a concrete roadmap for improving the health of our forests and enhancing the living standards of our forest fringe villagers.

Patnaik’s direction came while addressing a two-day conference of DFOs organised here.

Speaking on the occasion, the Chief Minister said that in spite of the difficult situation due to the pandemic, our forest cover has improved in the last two years as per India State of Forests Report- 2021.

“We have added the highest number of mangrove forests in the country and third highest in total increase of forest cover between 2019 and 2021. This has been possible due to constant support of our people, the VSS members and tireless effort of forest staff in the field”, he said.

He called upon the officials to work towards continuing this trend in the years to come.

He said that afforestation is a key component for providing employment to people in forest fringe villages and advised the officials to rope in Women Self Help Groups for raising seedlings for the Forest Department.

He urged the plantation programmes under the 5T Initiative. This would bring transparency, timeliness and encourage teamwork among all stakeholders, he added.

Patnaik said that many of our forestry programmes such as Joint Forest Management,  and the Odisha Forestry Sector Development Project have been successful in providing livelihoods and empowering the local communities.

Speaking on various issues such as Human-Elephant conflict, Trafficking of wildlife, and the incidents of forest fires, he said that these are key concerns where we need to prepare an integrated plan with a focussed approach for significant reduction in such cases.

He expressed happiness over Odisha becoming a leading state in harnessing digital technology in forest management.