A forestry intervention project to rejuvenate some major rivers, including the Krishna and the Cauvery, is in the offing to increase flow and water quality.
S.C. Gairola, Director General of the Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education (ICFRE), who was in the city on Tuesday, said the ICFRE is preparing a DPR for forestry intervention in 13 major river basins of the country.
“The ICFRE will work on the main tributaries of the Krishna across Maharashtra, Karnataka, Telangana, and ending with the Bay of Bengal. The Institute of Forest Genetics and Tree Breeding (IFGTB), Coimbatore, is working on the regeneration of the Cauvery. The preliminary stages for both the rivers have begun,” officials said. Mr. Gairola also said the forests of India are facing problems owing to adverse climate change, global warming, and land degradation. To address these, projects focussed on bamboo, sandalwood, tree improvement, forest fires, forest ecosystem services, and other emerging areas are being implemented, he said.
The ICFRE Council has also prepared the National REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) strategies and the Government of India has taken the task to restore 26 million hectares of degraded land and is committed to sequestering carbon dioxide to the tune of 2.5 to 3 billion tonnes, he said.
ICFRE is also in the process of developing an e-protection system and micro-chips that can be inserted inside the bark of the tree to prevent it from being cut down, he added.
