Agricultural and forest areas are decreasing day by day. Forest products are also decreasing .We do not want to see women staff stitiching clothes and male staff busy in close door meetings in such department or any other offices. Officials need to wake up and start acting as we are not aware of National Afforestation Programme, Integrated Forest Protection Scheme, Eco-Development Force (EDF) Scheme, Grants-in- Aid for Greening India Scheme, Gram Van Yojana (GVY) for afforestation on non forest lands, Assistance for Development of National Parks and Sanctuaries for afforestation, Regeneration of degraded forests etc being taken up in full swing. The forest area in Manipur is around by 173 square kilometer. We have to understand that 728 square kilometer of forest area in the country decreased from the year 2003 to 2005 . The forest area of the country was 677,816 sq km in 2003 and 677,088 sq km in 2005. Manipur’s forest area was 17,259 sq km in 2003 and 17,086 sq km in 2005. The loss of forest area in Manipur was due to shifting cultivation. Manipur has been receiving funds. It should be utilised properly. Globally the destruction of parts of the Brazilian Amazon has threatened scores of rare species doomed to disappear even if deforestation is halted, a new study has found.The study, done by the scientists at Imperial College, London, has revealed that deforestation in Brazil
has already claimed casualties, but the animals lost to date in the rainforest region are just a fifth of those that will slowly die out due to loss of habitat.The researchers reached the bleak conclusion after creating a statistical model to calculate the Brazilian Amazon’s “extinction debt”, or the number of species headed for extinction as a result of past deforestation. The model draws on historical deforestation rates and animal populations in 50 by 50 kilometers squares of land.According to The Guardian, scientists have found that in parts of the eastern and southern Amazon, 30 years of concerted deforestation have shrunk viable living and breeding territories, which are enough to condemn 38 species to regional extinction in coming years, including 10 mammal, 20 bird and eight amphibian species.The systematic clearance of trees from the Amazon forces wildlife into ever-smaller patches of ground, the report said.
Though few species are killed off directly in forest clearances, many face a slower death sentence as their breeding rates fall and competition for food becomes more intense.”For now, the problem is along the arc of deforestation in the south and east where there is a long history of forest loss. But that is going to move in the future. We expect most of the species there to go extinct, and we’ll pick up more extinction debt along the big, paved highways which are now cutting into the heart
of the Amazon.
Read more / Original news source: http://manipur-mail.com/afforestation/
