‘145,245 acres of forest land encroached in Sindh’

The forest secretary informed the Supreme Court on Thursday that 145,245 acres of forest land was encroached in Sindh, while 64,497 acres were allotted to other departments without the consent of the forest department.

Syed Asif Haider Shah’s report stated that 145,245 acres of forest land was under illegal possession in different districts of the province. He said forests were protected quite modestly until the early 1970s.

Even a perfunctory review of the record reveals an astounding 80 per cent drop in actual forest cover in Sindh since 1971, from 500,000 to 100,000 acres, which is less than 0.3 per cent of the entire surface area, he added.

The court asked him about forestation in the province, including all along the Indus River. Shah replied that the forest department covered 10 per cent of the total area of the province, with 0.3 per cent actual forest cover, which was much less than the four per cent international requirement.

The court asked why Sindh’s people did not love their province and work for its betterment, saying that while travelling upcountry from the province, only garbage and squatter settlements could be witnessed, but you could see greenery only after entering Punjab.

Shah’s report also said that for the past 47 years forest cover had seen a steady decline without any respite, as the forest department started decaying due to internal mismanagement, corruption, poor governance, favouritism, politicisation, weak control, external interventions in the shape of faulty policies and lack of political will to reform the department.

He said tens of thousands of trees were cut and sold to generate revenue, adding that while generating financial gains the department completely closed its eyes to the environmental loss.

He also said there was no effective regeneration policy, so most of the land that had a tree cover was left vacant and devoid of plantation, leaving it at the mercy of the nearby land owner to gradually take over it for agricultural purposes.

He admitted that the forest department remained indifferent, saying that the mode of taking over state land gradually changed from surreptitious to blatant, while the use of forest land in most cases remained agricultural, barring few sporadic instances where it was being used for residential and commercial purposes with the connivance of the local revenue authorities.

He pointed out that the revenue department was also been making illegal allotments of the forest land and putting it to other institutional uses without the forest department’s consent.

He said there were also instances where forest land was permanently transferred to private parties in violation of state policy and neglecting clear-cut instructions of the SC, adding that 64,500 acres were transferred away from the forest department.

The forest secretary mentioned that 70,000 acres were also leased out to 3,500 people through the agro-forestry lease policy that did not benefit the forests. He said the encroached land should be reclaimed through agro-forestry auction with strict lease term of growing 50 per cent of forest on land granted on lease, hoping that if the department was able to implement this on encroached land, it would fetch around Rs2 billion apart from forest cover of 72,000 acres in the next five years.

He suggested that there should be a new lease policy for forest land and a strict ban on felling trees on entire state land, regardless of the fact that it was forest or otherwise. After taking the report on record, the court disposed of the petiti