The woods are lovely, but dark and deep?

Story/Place - India
Anahita Mukherji, TNN Jul 17, 2011, 06.38am IST
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India's forest cover has been increasing, says the government. But the government might just be fudging the figures. According to a research paper called 'Cryptic Destruction of India's Native Forests', written by two Indian scientists and a colleague from Australia, the exact opposite has been happening — our forest cover has been decreasing.
While the country's latest 'Status of Forest Report 2009' claims a 5% growth in the country's forest cover between 1997 and 2007, the research paper calls the government's bluff by pointing out that large chunks of this cover were actually made up of exotic tree plantations such as eucalyptus and acacia. When the plantations were subtracted from the total forest cover, the figures showed a 1.5-2.7% shrinking of India's natural forests each year. More ominously, the paper adds that "India has already lost 80% of its native forest cover".
While plantations form a large part of India's afforestation effort, environmentalists say that a row of planted trees cannot be called a forest. Quite on the contrary, plantations are often referred to as ecological deserts. They're made up of a single species, while natural forests are multi-canopied, consisting of an undergrowth of leaf litter, bushes and shrubs, small, shade-loving trees and taller trees that form the roof of the forest. "It's impossible to replace what has evolved over thousands of years," says Stalin D, director (projects) for Vanashakti, a conservation organization.
According to PK Sen, executive director of the Ranthambore Foundation, natural forests support associated species — those that depend on each other. The clearing of forests then, which are later replaced by plantations, often results in the extinction of several species of flora and fauna. Kamaljit S Bawa adds in his book Conservation Biology — A Primer for South Asia that "in past geological periods, the loss of species eventually balanced out or exceeded the evolution of new species. However, current rates of extinction are 100 to 1,000 those of past rates".
Conservationist Belinda Wright says the country is currently witnessing a dramatic loss of forest corridors which link one protected area with another. "Because of the destruction, animal and plant populations cannot move from one area to another, leading to the isolation of those populations. That eventually leads to the extinction of species," she says. Wright adds that the loss of forest corridors also results in mananimal conflict.

source - timesofindia.indiatimes.com

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