Forest Conservation and Social Forestry: Notes and PYQs

The correct answer is C, 1980. The Forest (Conservation) Act was passed in 1980 to stop the steady loss of forest land to mining, roads, dams and townships. Its central provision is that no State Government or other authority may dereserve a reserved forest or allow forest land to be used for a non-forest purpose without the prior approval of the Central Government, and a 1988 amendment tightened it further by covering clearing of naturally grown trees for reafforestation. Option A, 1972, is the year of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, which deals with animals, hunting and protected areas. Option B, 1976, is the year the Forty-second Amendment inserted Articles 48A and 51A(g) into the Constitution and moved forests and wildlife to the Concurrent List. Option D, 1984, is the year of the Bhopal gas tragedy, which led to the Environment (Protection) Act of 1986. Keep the chain in order: 1972 wildlife, 1976 constitutional duty, 1980 forest conservation, 1986 environment protection.

The correct answer is B, Bishnoi. The Bishnoi community of western Rajasthan follows the twenty-nine tenets laid down by Guru Jambheshwar in the fifteenth century, several of which forbid the felling of green trees and the killing of animals, and it is for this reason that khejri groves and herds of blackbuck survive in the desert districts. In 1730 at Khejarli near Jodhpur, Amrita Devi and a large number of Bishnois were killed while clinging to khejri trees to stop them being cut for the Maharaja's lime kiln, and the national Amrita Devi Bishnoi Wildlife Protection Award commemorates that sacrifice. Option A, the Ramsnehi sect, and option C, the Laldasi sect, and option D, the Niranjani sect, are all devotional traditions of Rajasthan, but none of them is identified with the protection of trees and wildlife. Papers often pair this question with the Chipko movement of the Garhwal Himalaya, which drew openly on the Bishnoi example.

The correct answer is D, Madhya Pradesh. Successive assessments by the Forest Survey of India have placed Madhya Pradesh first among the States in the absolute area under forest cover, a position it owes to its very large size and to the extensive teak and sal forests of the Satpura, Vindhya and Baghelkhand tracts. Option C, Arunachal Pradesh, is the usual second in area and it leads several States in the share of its own geographical area under forest, which is the distinction the question is testing: largest area is not the same as highest percentage. Option B, Chhattisgarh, also carries dense sal forests and stands among the leading States but not at the top. Option A, Kerala, has rich tropical evergreen forests in the Western Ghats but is far too small to lead in area. Remember the pairing as largest forest area in Madhya Pradesh, and the highest proportion of area under forest in the small hill States of the north east.

The correct answer is A, Uttarakhand. The movement began in 1973 in the Chamoli district of the Garhwal Himalaya, which was then part of Uttar Pradesh and has been in the new State of Uttarakhand since 2000. Villagers, and above all the women of Reni village led by Gaura Devi, embraced the trees so that contractors could not fell them, and Sunderlal Bahuguna and Chandi Prasad Bhatt carried the demand forward until a ban on green felling above a certain altitude was ordered. Option B, Himachal Pradesh, has its own forest protection traditions but not Chipko. Option C, Karnataka, is the home of the Appiko movement of 1983 in the Western Ghats, led by Panduranga Hegde, which is the southern parallel to Chipko and is often set as a distractor here. Option D, Assam, is unconnected with it. The word chipko means to cling, and appiko means to hug in Kannada.

The correct answer is B, July. Van Mahotsav is observed in the first week of July, which is chosen because the monsoon has arrived over most of the country by then and a newly planted sapling has the best chance of surviving. It was started in 1950 on the initiative of K. M. Munshi, then Union Minister for Agriculture and Food, as a people's festival of tree planting rather than a departmental exercise. Option A, March, carries World Forestry Day on the twenty-first and World Water Day on the twenty-second, but not Van Mahotsav. Option C, October, carries Wildlife Week in its first week, which is a separate observance devoted to animals. Option D, December, is not associated with any national planting programme and falls in the dry season when survival of saplings is poor. Examiners frequently place Wildlife Week and Van Mahotsav in the same option set, so fix July for trees and October for wildlife.

The correct answer is A, Panduranga Hegde. The Appiko movement started in 1983 in the Uttara Kannada district of Karnataka, in the Western Ghats, where villagers walked into the forest and hugged trees marked for felling by contractors; Panduranga Hegde organised it after studying the Chipko movement of the Himalaya. Option B, Medha Patkar, is identified with the Narmada Bachao Andolan against the submergence caused by large dams on the Narmada. Option C, Baba Amte, worked for people affected by leprosy and also joined the Narmada struggle, but he did not lead Appiko. Option D, Sunderlal Bahuguna, is the best known face of Chipko in Uttarakhand and of the campaign against the Tehri dam, and he is placed here precisely because candidates confuse the two movements. The simple mapping to carry into the hall is Chipko with Bahuguna and Bhatt in the Himalaya, and Appiko with Hegde in the Western Ghats.

The correct answer is C, one third. The National Forest Policy of 1952 laid down that about thirty-three per cent of the country's geographical area should carry forest or tree cover, and it broke that national figure into about sixty per cent for the hill and mountain regions, where slopes must be held against erosion and landslides, and about twenty per cent for the plains. The National Forest Policy of 1988 retained the same target while shifting the purpose of forest management from revenue to ecological balance. Option A, one fifth, is the figure prescribed for the plains alone, which is why it is offered here. Option B, one fourth, and option D, one half, do not appear in either policy. The point to remember is that this is a policy goal and not an achievement, and that the Forest Survey of India measures how far the country actually stands from it in the India State of Forest Report published every two years.

The correct answer is A, West Bengal. In the early 1970s, in the Arabari range of the Midnapore district of West Bengal, foresters stopped treating villagers as encroachers and instead gave them a share in the protection and in the produce of a degraded sal forest; the forest recovered remarkably, and the experiment became the model for Joint Forest Management, adopted as national policy through a Government of India circular in 1990. Option B, Odisha, has a strong tradition of self-initiated community forest protection and thousands of village committees, but Arabari is not in Odisha. Option C, Gujarat, and option D, Maharashtra, both run large Joint Forest Management programmes without being the origin of the idea. Under Joint Forest Management the village committee shares the usufruct, that is grasses, fuelwood, non-timber produce and a share of the final harvest, which is the detail most often asked.

The correct answer is B, Dehradun. The Forest Survey of India, set up in 1981, has its headquarters at Dehradun in Uttarakhand, the city that is also home to the Forest Research Institute and the Indira Gandhi National Forest Academy, which makes Dehradun the centre of forestry work in the country. The organisation maps forest and tree cover from satellite imagery and publishes the India State of Forest Report every two years, grading cover as very dense, moderately dense, open forest and scrub by canopy density. Option A, New Delhi, is the seat of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, which is the parent ministry but not the survey itself. Option C, Bhopal, hosts the Indian Institute of Forest Management, a separate institution that trains forest managers. Option D, Coimbatore, has the Institute of Forest Genetics and Tree Breeding. Questions on forestry institutions and their locations are common, so keep these four apart.

The correct answer is D, very dense forest. The Forest Survey of India divides forest cover by the proportion of ground shaded by the tree canopy. Above seventy per cent the patch is very dense forest; from forty up to seventy per cent it is moderately dense forest; from ten up to forty per cent it is open forest; and below ten per cent it is scrub, which is counted separately and not as forest cover. Option A, open forest, therefore belongs to the ten to forty band and makes up a large share of the recorded cover in India. Option B, scrub, is the degraded category below ten per cent. Option C, moderately dense forest, is the forty to seventy band. A connected definition worth learning is that any patch of one hectare or more with more than ten per cent canopy is counted as forest cover whatever its legal status, which is why orchards and plantations can enter the figure.

The correct answer is B, the Forest Rights Act of 2006. Its full name is the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, and it recognises individual rights over land that such families were cultivating, community rights over grazing grounds and water bodies, and rights over minor forest produce, while making the gram sabha the authority that verifies claims. Option A, the Indian Forest Act of 1927, is the colonial parent statute that classifies forests as reserved, protected and village forests and treats most local use as a privilege rather than a right. Option C, the Wildlife Protection Act of 1972, deals with the protection of species, national parks and sanctuaries. Option D, the Environment Protection Act of 1986, is the umbrella law passed after the Bhopal tragedy and covers pollution and environmental clearance generally. The 2006 Act is often asked together with the Panchayats Extension to Scheduled Areas Act of 1996.