The Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education (ICFRE) has set up a task force to work on revision of forest types in the country.
According to the Director General of the ICFRE, Dr VK Bahuguna, the ICFRE has established a task force with a primary aim to revisit the forest-type of India and assess the changes, if any, due to climatic changes and other factors. He said the main objective of the exercise is to understand the impact of climate change on forest ecosystems and also to provide the field foresters a forest classification based on field management imperatives.
Headed by the DG. The task force will have Senior ICFRE official Sandeep Tripath as its member secretary and Dr MS Swaminath, Additional Principal, Chief Conservator of Forests, Karnataka, as the coteam leader. Other important team members include Dr Manoranjan Bhanja of Andhra Pradesh, Dr GS Goraya of Himachal Pradesh and Dr Krishan Kumar from the ICFRE. The team will finish its field work by June.
It is noteworthy that India Forests were classified for the first time in 1935 by Sir HG Champion and later on revised by Champion and Sethin 1968, dividing India’s forests into 16 types and about 221 sub-type groups. Now, after about 45 years, Champion and Seth’s classification is still used for forest management purposes while India’s forests have gone under tremendous change owing to anthropogenic and other types of changes.