Less than 1% of forest land encroached; menace reduced by 26.9% in 10 years: Maharashtra govt report

Forest area encroached upon has reduced by 26.9 per cent in the past decade, between 2010 and 2020, according to data. As per the department’s report named “A Statistical Outline – Salient Forest Statistics 2019”, a total of 82,233 hectares of forest area was encroached in 2010 which reduced to 71,627 hectares in 2015. As on March 2019, 60,058 hectares of forest area was encroached, with 1,36,585 instances of encroachment.

During 2019 and 2020, the forest department removed encroachments on 821.33 hectares of forest area. Despite this, net encroachment was found to have increased at the end of the year, as structures continued sprouting up in different areas.

“Encroachment on forest area is a matter of hunger for land, especially in times when land value is soaring, and availability is shrinking. While we can lose forest area to encroachments, there is no way to gain our forests back if its very essence — the ecology – is destroyed. We can only increase tree cover with afforestation. Encroachments are taken very seriously, and what qualifies as encroachment is also weighed carefully,” a senior forest official (conservation) said.

According to the annual administration report: “With the growing incidence of encroachment on forest lands has increased because of growing demands for forest land, their rising prices and the population pressure, threatening the very existence of forests. The need for establishing special vigilance organisation exclusively to look after the protection of forests and to exercise control on forest offences was keenly felt. A vigilance cell was, therefore, created in the year 1981-82 for monitoring & pursuing follow-up action to control forest offences.”

There are 61 mobile squads that work round-the-clock to tackle encroachments. In 2019-2020, the squads conducted 474 raids and registered 1,281 offences.

In March 2020, Dhule circle had the highest measure of forest area under encroachment at 20,838 hectares, followed by Gadchiroli with 7,208 hectares, and Aurangabad at 6,484 hectares.