Telangana chasing tree planting, set to miss big forest picture

HYDERABAD: As Telangana prepares for round three of Haritha Haaram -tree-plantation programme that is one of chief minister

K Chandrasekhar Rao

's pet projects -the state is preparing for failure when it comes to taking care of its forests and the animals that live in them.

Harita Haraam

, according to state government, is designed to push the state's tree cover to 33% of its geographical area, up from the present 22% which mostly is forests. And come January 2018, Telangana will be one state that will not be able to match step for step with other states in the country as India will launch its 4th and all important nationwide tiger and wild animal census.

With nearly 3,000 vacancies at the critical field level, Telangana appears set to let go the best scientific opportunity it will get for another four years in studying and learning about actual conditions in its forests and their health.

One of the pre-requisites of the week long `Monitoring of Tiger, Co-predator, Prey and Habitat' scheduled for January next is intensive field work at the beat level in the forests of the state. Telangana has 3,130 forest beats but barely has a few more than 1,000 forest beat offi cers (FBOs), each expected to have thorough knowledge of the 20sqkm or so patch of forest assigned as their beat. In addition, there are few more hundred vacancies at the assistant beat officers (ABOs).

As per the prescribed schedule, monitoring is an intensive exercise that requires each

FBO

be accompanied by two more persons. This means there will be a requirement of 9,390 personnel to be on the field during the week-long monitoring exercise. When the forest department approached

Telangana State Public Service Commission

for recruitment of staff to fill vacancies at various levels,

TSPSC

expressed helplessness with regard to re cruitment of FBOs and ABOs.Current rules permit TSPSC to recruit staff with district as a unit while the forest department functions based on divisions. Against 31districts in the state, the department has 58 divisions. If TSPSC is to recruit FBOs and ABOs, rules have to be changed, something that is not expected to happen soon.

“We will have to do it. We will press into service all staff and involve volunteers,“ a senior forest department official said. However, sources said each person taking part in the monitoring needs to be trained in the methods and data collection. The person will also need to be able to identify plant species in each beat.