Sir,
Forests are of vital importance to our ecosystem in many ways.They help a lot in preserving life on the earth.Besides soaking up the atmospheric carbon dioxide, they serve as home to various species of animals, plants and birds which can not live in other ecosystems.The forests also help to regulate the water cycle and thus, return water vapour back to the atmosphere.Not only this, forests help in checking soil erosion and sudden floods.Many people living near forests depend on the forests for their sustenance and livelihood.Forests provide us valuable timber and also supply us with many medicinal herbs.
Forests also soothe our eyes and provide us spiritual sustenance when we cast a glance at the vast canopy of green leaves.In view of so many uses of forests, it is simply impossible to imagine life without forests. But unfortunately, in the name of development, forests have been cleared for mega projects, urbanisation, construction of roads etc and thus land under forest cover has significantly shrinked.Moreover, trees are also cut by many unscruplous elements and smugglers stealithly.Moreover, forest land is also cleared for agricultural land and habitation purposes.Sometimes huge forest wealth is lost due to forest fires and many endangered species of plants and animals are lost for ever and severe damage caused to trees.Thus, there is need for taking measures to preserve our forest wealth.Unauthorised grazing in the forests needs to be checked.We ought to organise camps to aware the people about conserving our forest resources.Laws related to conservation and preservation of forests need to be strictly implemented and the forest officials found guilty of dereliction of duty need to be penalised in an appropriate manner.Afforestation and reforestation programme on the war footing needs to be undertaken to make up the loss caused due to deforestation. Moreover, perhaps there is need to launch movements like Chipko Movement once again.
Ashok Sharma,
Udhampur.
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