Baliapal: A large number of saw mills continue to operate without licence in rural areas of Baliapal block in defiance of the Supreme Court’s direction taking a toll on rural forests and casuarinas jungle at coastal areas of Balasore district. Local people have expressed their concern over the administration looking the other way.
According to some senior citizens here, at one point of time, the bank of Subarnarekha river, the reserve forest, government jungles, pasture land and unclaimed land along the Bay of Bengal coast used to have wide varieties of trees including mango, Indian blackberry, Arjun, jackfruit, casuarinas, neem, to name just a few. People used to collect firewood from these jungles. This apart, during mass festivals, people use woods from these jungles.
“The picture has changed for the worst and these jungles have gradually withered away. A few years ago, some illegal saw mills came up at places like Kalipada, Simulia, Dantunida, Block Chhaka, Langaleswar, Mandhatabazar and Panchapali, which are still running – without permission. The saw mills have a detrimental effect on our jungles,” they alleged.
Sources said, these timber mafias are clandestinely transporting logs in trucks and tractors to West Bengal. They generally use the second bridge on the Subarnarekha river, Pantei ferry ghat and Dagara Choumukha to smuggle out the logs.
It is alleged, these timber mafias are flourishing their business after greasing the palms of some unscrupulous police officers.
The timber smugglers are even not sparing jungles created under social forestry programme. Knowing the difficulty in the smuggling timber from these forests, they bribe some of the locals and rob the jungles of valuable trees such as Acacia, teak, sheesham, eucalyptus and casuarinas.
But, according to Balasore divisional forest officer (DFO), everything is going on in accordance with the provisions of law.