Jajpur/Chandikhole: Even as 50 years have passed since the Cuttack forest division published a notification to convert 15 forests under Dalijoda forest range in this district into reserve forests, the order is yet to be materialized, a report said.
The proposed reserve forests spread over 4346.75 hectares. Taking advantage of the laxity, influential persons have encroached upon large tracts of these forest land and illegally mine black stones, murrams, and laterite stones from these areas.
The abrupt delay has done a lot of damage to some of the proposed reserve forests. The proposed reserve forests like Asia-Charinagal, Balarampur, Madhupur, Bandhapali, Kantigadia, Maulabhanja, Bajragiri are now on the verge of extinction due to the delay.
This has resulted in loss of green cover and bio-diversity in thousands of hectares of forest land. The residents and environmentalists have lodged several complaints at various levels of the administration but the revenue and forest departments only pass the buck. The delay has only raised questions on the transparency of the administration.
Sources said the state forest department declared 15 forest blocks in Jajpur district under Cuttack forest division as proposed reserve forests under Odisha Forest Act-1972 and Section-4(1) of Indian Forest Act-1927 at different point of time between 1970 and 1981.
However, since then around 50 years have passed but the state revenue and disaster management department is yet to pronounce them as reserve forests under Section 21 of the Odisha Forest Act-1972.
The divisional forest officer (DFO) of Cuttack forest division, in a letter-7170 dated-13.09.2019, informed Jajpur Collector on the need to convert the forest blocks as reserve forests. He also urged the District Collector to direct the forest settlement officer to do the needful in this regard.
Since then the proposal is stuck in red-tape and is limited to exchange of letters. In the past, these forests had wild animals like leopards, bears, elephants, deer and porcupines. However, with the passage of time, they have become a rarity.
The population of wild animals has drastically reduced due to large scale tree felling, establishment of illegal stone quarries and blasting of explosives, senior residents alleged. Reports said the forest department has carried out tree plantation programmes over 500 hectare of land within 2012-2013.
However, no efforts have been made for protection of these trees. When contacted, DFO Sudarshan Patra said the onus of declaring these forests as reserve forest sits on the revenue department. Several letters have been written to the District Collector but nothing has been done in this regard. Efforts to get the comment of Jajpur sub-collector were not successful.
PNN
