PANAJI
The State government appointed a Review Committee under the Chief Conservator of Forest (CCF) to review private forest areas, has identified an additional 55.57 sq kms of area to be notified as private forest.
Last year, in two separate orders, the government had notified 45.5 sq kms and 46.1 sq kms of area in the State as private forest in compliance with an order by the National Green Tribunal (NGT).
The State government’s criteria to identify private forests are that the area should be contiguous to government forest lands and, if in isolation, the minimum area identified should be 5 hectare.
The government appointed Review Committee under the Chief Conservator of Forest (CCF) to review the identified private forest areas by the Thomas and Araujo committee, between 2012-18, has submitted its 8th interim final report to the government, proposing 25.63 sq kms of area as private forest.
As per the report of the Review Committee, submitted to the government, the Thomas and Araujo Committee -- constituted for North and South Goa, respectively -- had identified a total 3349 survey numbers as private forest. The committee has disposed off 2442 survey numbers.
“The review committee reviewed the survey numbers after detailed analysis through Google Timeline Change corroborated based on court orders, tree felling, etc,” the committee said.
The committee said that despite field constraints, efforts were taken up to complete the review work in a time-bound manner, where substantial progress has been made in the field and as per the recent status, 55.57 sq kms of area has been proposed as private forest in its 8th report.
As per the criteria, the canopy density should not be less than 0.4. The third criterion is that 75% of the tree composition of such lands should be of forestry species.
