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Foresters deny abetting logging
GULARIYA, JUL 12 -
Bardiya District Forest Office, breaching the law, has allowed locals to fell trees in a forest of Tepari that was handed over to community two weeks earlier. The office denies the charge.
The rule has it that a forest office can grant such a permit to the community concerned only one year after a forest handover. Following the decision, the forest adjoining Nepal-India border has allegedly seen a massive scale of deforestation. Ranger Ramjanat Sah claimed just 11 trees were allowed to cut in the forest.
District Forest Officer Prabhunath Prasad Yadav said the office could issue felling permit at any time as the forest has been handed over to the community. “There is no rule mentioning the time frame for the issuance of the permit,” he argued.
The incident comes at a time when the government is investigating rampant deforestation throughout the country. The first-hand study conducted in various parts of the country by panels formed under the parliamentary Natural Resources and Means Committee have already implicated forest officials of their involvement in deforestation along with timber smugglers. Officials of the the Bardiya forest office are also under the scanner.
Posted on: 2010-07-13 07:38
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