Even as the state forest department is gearing up to observe World Forestry Day on Wednesday, environmentalists and botanists urge for protection of indigenous shola forests and scrub jungles.
While forest minister K.T. Pachaimal informed the Assembly last year that the state forest cover has been growing by about 1-2 per cent on an annual basis, environmentalists and botanists declare that the quality of forest cover is degrading over the years.
“The worst affected are the scrub jungles in the Girugambakkam, Vandalur and Vedanthangal areas.
These scrub jungles once had rich biodiversity but now a whole part of these areas have been converted into housing plots,” opines Mr S. Venkataraaman, fondly called ‘Poochi Venkat’ by his friends and members of Madras Naturalists Society.
Mr Venkat, who has been specialising in insect photography for the past 15 years in Chennai, admits that forest and tree cover have depleted in the Chennai metropolitan area.
“There is no doubt that the forest quality is degrading and reserve forests suffer encroachments. There is abundant scope to improve the vegetation,” opined Prof D. Narasimhan, department of Botany, Madras Christian College.
According to confidential forest department sources, Tamil Nadu has 22,877 square kilometres of recorded forest area, which is 17.59 per cent of the geographical area of 1,30,058 square km of the state.
The forest and tree cover is 28,306 sq km, which is 21.76 per cent of the total geographical area of the state as assessed by the forest survey of India, against the 33.33 per cent envisaged in national forest policy 1988.
There is an urgent need to increase the forest and tree cover as the state lags behind the Union government’s recommendation, official sources added.