UTS Voice
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What are the Ministry of Environment and Forests priorities at this moment?
Under the Centrally Sponsored Scheme – ‘Development of National Parks and Sanctuaries’, the Ministry is providing technical
and financial assistance to various National Parks and Sanctuaries across the country.
During 2006-07, Rs.56 crore had been provided under the scheme for the management of 340 National Parks and
Sanctuaries in the country. It is also the mandate of the Ministry to expand and strengthen the Protected Area network in the country.
The Ministry has also set up a multi-disciplinary Wildlife Crime Control Bureau to combat the menace of wildlife crime in a more focused and dedicated manner.
The process of institutionalizing the Crime Bureau is currently on.
Forests in India are primarily the environmental and social resources; economic resources only secondarily.
Ministry’s priority is to meet the sustenance needs of the people living in and around forests and also to provide livelihoods to those people.
At present, in the country, there are about 1.06 lakhs Joint Forest Management Committees managing an extent of 22.02 mha, involving 21.99 million people of forest
area with benefit sharing mechanism.
“Project Tiger” was launched in 1973 with an objective “ to ensure maintenance of a viable population of Tigers in India for scientific, economic, aesthetic, cultural and ecological values, and to preserve for all times, areas of biological importance as a national heritage for the benefit, education and enjoyment of the people”.
Under this Centrally Sponsored Scheme, technical and financial assistance is provided to States having tiger reserves. At present there are 28 tiger reserves spread over 17 States in the country. During 2006-07 an amount of Rs.3289.86093 lakhs was released under the scheme.
• One of the thrust areas of the Ministry of Environment and Forests is to achieve the National Forest Policy goal of 1/3rd Forest and Tree Cover in the country.
• The following are some of the major initiatives taken by the Ministry to increase the forest cover of the country :
(a) The Ministry is implementing the National Afforestation Programme (NAP) scheme and the Grants-in-Aid for Greening India Scheme. Under the NAP Scheme, so far 720 projects have been approved by the Ministry at a total cost of Rs. 1526.78 crores to treat an area of approximately 9.36 lakh hectares.
(b) Guidelines have been issued in December, 2004 to the States/ UTs to rationalize felling and transit regulations for trees grown on private lands, so as to encourage private land owners to plant more trees.
(c) All states and UTs have been requested to constitute an inter-departmental coordination committee under the chairpersonship of Chief Secretary to elicit participation of all departments of the government in tree planting. The Ministry has been continuously pursuing with the States/UTs for planting more trees under the 20-Point Programe. Under this programme, the area covered during 2006-07 was 2.32 million hectare, up from 1.14 million hectares in 2002-03.
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