♦ Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Bhupender Yadav released the ‘India State of Forest Report 2023 (ISFR 2023) at Forest Research Institute, Dehradun on 21 December 2024.
♦ The ISFR is brought out by the Forest Survey of India (FSI) on a biennial basis since 1987.
♦ FSI carries out in-depth assessment of the forest and tree resources of the country based on interpretation of Remote Sensing satellite data and field based National Forest Inventory (NFI), and the results are published in the ISFR.
♦ The India State of Forest Report 2023 is 18th such report in the series. The report contains information on forest cover, tree cover, mangrove cover, growing stock, carbon stock in India’s forests, instances of forest fire, Agroforestry, etc.
Highlights:
♦ As per the present assessment, the total Forest and Tree cover is 8,27,357sq km, which is 25.17 percent of the geographical area of the country.
♦ The Forest Cover has an area of about 7,15,343sq km (21.76%) whereas the Tree Cover has an area of 1,12,014 sq km (3.41%).
♦ The Forest and Tree cover of the country is 8,27,357 sq km which is 25.17 percent of the geographical area of the country, consisting of 7,15,343 sq km (21.76%) as forest cover and 1,12,014 sq km (3.41%) as tree cover.
♦ As compared to assessment of 2021, there is an increase of 1445 sq km in the forest and tree cover of the country which includes 156 sq km increase in the forest cover and 1289 sq km increase in tree cover.
♦ Top four states showing maximum increase in forest and tree cover are Chhattisgarh (684 sq km) followed by Uttar Pradesh (559 sq km), Odisha (559 sq km) and Rajasthan (394 sq km).
♦ Top three states showing maximum increase in forest cover are Mizoram (242 sq km) followed by Gujarat (180 sq km) and Odisha (152 sq km).
♦ Area wise top three states having largest forest and tree cover are Madhya Pradesh (85,724 sq km) followed by Arunachal Pradesh (67,083 sq km) and Maharashtra (65,383 sq km).
♦ Area wise top three states having largest forest cover are Madhya Pradesh (77,073 sq km) followed by Arunachal Pradesh (65,882 sq km) and Chhattisgarh (55,812 sq km).
♦ In terms of percentage of forest cover with respect to total geographical area, Lakshadweep (91.33 percent) has the highest forest cover followed by Mizoram (85.34 percent) and Andaman & Nicobar Island (81.62 percent).
♦ The present assessment also reveals that 19 states/UTs have above 33 percent of the geographical area under forest cover.
♦ Out of these, eight states/ UTs namely Mizoram, Lakshadweep, A & N Island, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Meghalaya, Tripura, and Manipur have forest cover above 75 percent.
♦ The total mangrove cover is 4,992 sq km in the country.