Bhubaneswar: Chief Secretary Suresh Mohapatra Sunday chaired a review meeting of state-level Compensatory Afforestation fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) and directed the officials concerned to make a digital database of forest assets.
Mohapatra told the Forest department officials to ensure that the digital database is in public domain and updated regularly. The top bureaucrat of the state also asked the officials to increase the green areas on bald hills through plantation and regeneration activities. The department was asked to put in place a robust system for ground-level monitoring and public disclosure.
Directions were also passed to create land banks for compensatory afforestation and protection of the land through segregation to ensure human activities are not taken on the land and regeneration happens naturally.
Mohapatra also asked the officials concerned to make a three-year Action Plan for making the forest roads motorable for easy availability of health and emergency services at the remote villages.
The Forest department, meanwhile, was asked to undertake solar fencing along the forest borders by taking the local people onboard to reduce the human-animal conflict.
Development Commissioner, Pradeep Kumar Jena asked the officials to undertake third party assessments of before and after conditions of the green cover densities against each plantation project. “All plantation projects should have monitorable objectives in terms of increase in green density and soil and moisture conservation,” he said.
During the meeting, the Committee approved an Annual Action Plan of 2021-22 with a total outlay of around Rs 903.39 crore. The major activities to be taken up under this included maintenance of previous year plantation, fodder and fruit bearing plantation, bamboo culture, wild life management, infrastructure development, block plantation, assisted natural regeneration, bald hill plantation, regeneration of bamboo forest, capacity building research and evaluation and others.
CAMPA CEO Uma Nanduri told the gathering that a total area of 56,958.73 hectares of forest area have been diverted for different public and developmental purposes in Odisha. She said that against this, afforestation has been done in 67,828 hectares.