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ISFR, a biennial exercise, assesses India’s forest and tree cover, bamboo resources, carbon stock and forest fires. Prakash Javadekar, Union Minister of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, released the India State of Forest Report (ISFR 2019) on Monday, 30th December, 2019. “In the present assessment, the total forest and tree cover of the country is 80.73 million hectares which is 24.56 per cent of the geographical area of the country,” said the Union Minister at the event in New Delhi to release the report. Increase in forest cover in the past two years was noted in the states of Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Jammu and Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh. The mangrove cover show an increase of 54 sq km from 2017 at a total of 4975 sq km. The top 3 states showing an increase in mangrove cover are Gujarat (37 sq km), Maharashtra (16 sq km) and Odisha (8 sq km). The ISFR reported a decline of forest cover in the North-eastern states, except Assam and Tripura. The total number of wetlands located within the RFA/GW were reported to be at 8.13%. The analysis also revealed that 21.40% of the forest cover is highly to extremely fire prone.

 

 

As reported by The Hindu

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