PANAJI
Forest Minister Vishwajit Rane on Wednesday said that the directions have been issued to the department to finalise the private forest and notify the same latest by December, this year.
Last year, in two separate orders, the government had notified 45.5 sqkm and 46.1 sq kms of areas in the State as private forest in compliance with an order by the National Green Tribunal (NGT).
“We just cannot simply declare anything as private forest… there are guidelines set for it… we have not touched even an inch of private forest for any purpose. I have told the department to see that the private forest issue is settled by December,” Rane said.
The State government appointed Review Committee is currently in process of reviewing around 3300-odd survey numbers, which were identified by the two Committees- North Goa Forest Division Committee and South Goa Forest Division Committee.
The department has said that any new survey numbers formed due to partition of any of these identified survey numbers after November 27, 2011 would be deemed to have been notified as private forest, if the identified area comes within the said notified survey numbers.
The review committee, which has formed several sub-committees, are carrying out ground enumeration of around 8500 ha or 85 sq kms area for further classification as private forest. The ground enumeration is based on the criteria that at least 75 per cent of the tree species in the private forest are of ‘forestry type’.
The first private forest parcel (46.1 sq kms) was notified based on the findings of the Sawant and Karapurkar committees, which were later reviewed and confirmed by the Sharma committee.
