India losing 333 acres of forest each day – RTI reply
18 Jun, 2013The reply to an application filed under the Right to Information (RTI) Act has revealed that rate of deforestation in India is very high. The reply, provided by the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF), states that the extent of forest land being diverted across the country on an average stands at 135 hectares (around 333 acres) per day.
According to the members of the Environment Impact Assessment Resources and Response Centre (ERC), the figure in reality should be much higher as they have analysed only those projects which have sought more than 40 hectares of area.
Mostly the diversion of forest areas is done on the pretext of mines, power plants, river valley projects, etc. Public and private agencies are being handed over large tracts of forest land who claim to utilise them for development projects. Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Arunachal Pradesh and Jharkhand are some of the states where diversion of forests is taking place at large scale.