Nature has gifted J&K State with rich forest wealth. This is owing to the climate and the soil. A variety of trees and foliage and herbs grow in our forests, which have great utility for the people. Forest wealth does not mean only the trees, though trees are foremost in counting forest wealth. Forests are the sanctuaries of wild life, birds and some rare species, which will get extinct if we do not attend to protection and preservation of forests. Forests are the main factor contributing to the climate and ecology of the State. Importance and utility of forests are rightly summed up in the official motto of Forest Department, which is a saying of a great Kashmiri Sufi saint. The motto is “food will last till forests last.” That is why people of ancient Kashmiri culture, sanctified forests and considered their protection as religious duty. The dangers of deforestation are unimaginable and should never happen.
However, with rapid increase in population, expansion of human habitats and fast changing the life style, great pressures is exerted on forests in more than one way. There was pressure of felling the trees and making the land available for human habitats, timber for use of construction of structures and wood for generating fuel etc. Thus started the wanton destruction and loot of forest wealth by human beings; the very human beings whose ancestors once worshipped these forests. That is the march of history. Society felt the need of adopting a mechanism that would help in protecting the forests. By virtue of a Cabinet decision of 1996, the Government created Forest Protection Force, which was posted to various forest units. The force was mandated to check illicit felling, encroachments, poaching, forest fires and illegal extraction/transportation of non-timber forest products. The Government set forth that each territorial forest division would have protection Gamma Units. In 2001 the Government enacted J&K Forest (Protection) Act to provide legal support to the Forest Protection Force envisaging that it will be an armed force on the pattern of Police Department for better protection of the green gold of the State.
In view of the importance of preserving the forests for which legal sanction was also obtained, people expected that the Government would provide real teeth to the Forest Protection Force so that the organization was able to discharge its duty with efficiency and objectivity. However, it seems that the spirit, with which the Act was framed, evaporated into thin air with its framing. The organization never received the infrastructure that it needed to become an effective mechanism. Out of 30 units sanctioned for the Forest Department only 23 are reported functional and the remaining seven are non functional. While the units of FPF in Kashmir are provided with weapons to meet the threat from timber mafia, no weapons are issued to the units deployed in Jammu region. We were told that the Central Government had agreed to provide weapons but this has not come true. If the organization is to work like a police force, then it should have the infrastructure of police force failing which we cannot expect the FPF to deliver the goods.
It is painful to say that general loot of our forest wealth has not stopped. We have the land mafia and timber mafia both working actively in tandem. These gangsters do not hesitate to use muscle power if Government functionaries like Forest Protection Force obstruct them. The mafia has illegally occupied thousands of kanals of forestland. Politically influential and monetarily powerful persons are involved in the mafia and it is becoming difficult to restrain their illegal activities. One more reason why the FPF should be equipped with firearms and other infrastructure is that the State is infested with militancy and there is large-scale infiltration of Pakistani terrorists into our State. We Are told that they have made their hideouts in the deep recesses of the forests and are dumping arms and ammunition in these hideouts. Therefore, it becomes all the more important for our Forest Protection Force to be equipped with weapons for self-protection and to meet the threat from any unidentified source. Yet another important thing in this connection is that the FPF has to be trained in handling the arms and warding off the threat whenever posed. The Government should allocate adequate funds to the development of infrastructure for the organization and make it fully functional all the 30 units of FPF.
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