India among top 10 nations in terms of forest area

NEW DELHI: India has increased its forest and tree cover 1% since 2015 to 802,088 square kilometres despite population and livestock pressures.

India State Forest Report 2017, the 15th in the series of biennial reports that officially record the country’s forest and tree cover, shows the country has added 8,021 sq km of forest and tree cover in the past two years. The report, released on Monday, reveals that India now stands 10th in the world in terms of forest area and eighth in terms of annual forest gain. “The total forest cover of the county is 708,273 sq km, which is 21.54% of India’s geographical area. The tree cover of the country is estimated to be 93,815 sq km, which is 2.85%,” the report said.

Three states – Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala – have contributed the most to increasing the forest cover, according to the report.


The overall increase in the forest and tree cover notwithstanding, the report has flagged two areas of concerns – decrease in medium dense forest cover and the decreasing forest cover in states in the Northeast. Twelve states and Union territories have seen a dip in their forest cover.

These include Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and six naturally rich states in the Northeast – Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh and Tripura.

The maximum forest cover reduction in the north-eastern states has been reported by Mizoram (531 sq km), Nagaland (450 sq km) and Arunachal Pradesh (190 sq km).