More than 80,000 hectares of forest area has been encroached in Nepal during the last 20 years.
According to the Department of Forest Research and Survey (DFRS), 80,635 ha of forest was occupied in two decades with 2,000 hectares of forest area was transferred to private ownership last year. The Department said that the encroachment had been increasing in the recent years.
"The encroachment is continuing. If it is not checked soon, it will have an ominous impact on ecology," Keshav Kanel, director general of DFRS said.
The Department said that the forest in inner-Terai and Terai was the primary target of the encroachers. Dang, Banke, Bardiya, Kailai, Kanchanpur, Bara, Parsa, Chitwan, and Rautahat districts are in high risk, the source mentioned.
"It is hard to control the encroachment of forestland. We retrieved 203 hectares of encroached forestland during the last year," Kanel said.
Prakash Jwala, member of parliamentary Natural Resource Committee, claimed powerful politicians were involved in deforestation in the name of rehabilitating the freed Kamaiyas and landless squatters. "The government is not thinking about those landless people. As a result, they are encroaching the forest." He suggested the government should address the issue of landless people to prevent further encroachment.
DFRS informed that it was setting up four forest security posts in Kailali, Rupandehi, Kapilvastu and Rautahat districts for the conservation of forest and wildlife. The posts will be manned by forest guards and Armed Police Force (APF) personnel. "We have shortage of human resource and monetary means. We had demanded for Rs. 3.2 million, but the Ministry of Finance has not responded to our demand," Kanel said.
The government has set aside Rs. 2.31 billion for Forest Ministry in this fiscal year's budget.
"Due to indifference on part of the concerned agencies, both the money as well as the forest resource are going in waste," Ghanshyam Pandey, president of Federation of Community Forest Users Nepal (FECOFUN) said.
Different NGOs and INGOs are spending lots of money in the name of forest conservation. However, encroachment of forest and deforestation have not stopped.
The figures show that 39.7 per cent of the total landmass in the country is covered with forest. User groups, Nepal Army, Armed Police Force and other organizations are working to preserve forest. DFRS source informed that 14,500 community users were active in forest preservation. The APF has preserved 257 hectares, Nepal Police 14 hectares, Traffic Police 6 hectares, educational and health organizations have 38 hectares and electricity schemes 56 hectares of forestland. Similarly, 36,600 hectares forestland has been preserved by privately.
"The government bodies have been unable to save forest," Pandey claimed. Kanel conceded partially. "Users of the community forest are more successful in preserving forest than government agencies," he said.
Pandey lamented for increasing of deforestation. He said the government had delayed the hand-over of more than five thousand proposed community forests to users. He said that users had no alternative but to seize the encroached forestland. "The government is to blame for encroachment of forest and deforestation. Users should be mobilized for preservation," he said.
Source: The Rising Nepal (September 28, 2007)