India Sitting On Ecological Time Bomb: Loses 333 Acres of Forest Daily

Bangalore: India records for a great amount of forest cover being lost. The extent of forest land being diverted across the nation on an average is 135 hectares (around 333 acres) per day, reported Rohith B R for TNN. These diversions are done stating various reasons like coal mines, industrial or river valley projects, thermal power plants, etc, revealed recent data acquired through RTI from the ministry of environment and forests by environmentalists.

The blatant truth is that large tracts of forest land are being handed over to public and private agencies who claim to use the forest land for development projects.

The figure is said to be much higher as the analysis relates only to projects which have sought more than 40 hectares of area, as per Members of the Environment Impact Assessment Resources and Response Centre (eRc), who were instrumental in compiling the data.

Karnataka is one of the states that has been diverting forest land, informed Ritwik Dutta, an advocate with Legal Initiative for Forest and Environment (LIFE). He said that "Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Arunachal Pradesh and Jharkhand are some of the other states which are into largescale diversions. We are compiling state-specific data on the extent of land being diverted," as reported by TNN.