Distribution of Forests in India

Forests are important for all forms of lives. (Photo: Prabhash K Dutta | New Delhi)

Total forest area in India is 64.01 million hectares – about 19 per cent of Indian territory (1999 figure).

Dense forest - 11 per cent

Open forest – 8 per cent. Grazing is permitted in an open forest.

Mangrove forest – 0.15 per cent

Indian forest is only 1.85 per cent of the total forest cover of the world. India has about 2.4 per cent of the total area and over 16 per cent of world’s population.

Under the existing policy of the government, 33 per cent of India should be under forest cover. Even the law of 33 per cent forest cover is not application in all parts of the country. Ideally, 60 per cent of the mountainous and plateau regions should be under forest cover while 20 per cent of the plain regions should have forest cover.

Distribution of forest in India is highly uneven. Maximum forest coverage is found in Andaman and Nicobar Islands. As per 1994, 92 per cent of the total area in Andaman and Nicobar Islands was under the forest cover.

Mizoram had 88.7 per cent, Nagaland 86.5 per cent, Arunachal Pradesh 82 per cent, Manipur 78.9 per cent and Meghalaya had 70.3 per cent forest cover. (Data till 1999) These are the mountainous and hilly states and have above 60 per cent of area under forest cover.

At the other hand, forest coverage is below the required 60 per cent despite being mountainous regions. Examples are two-third of Tripura is mountainous region but has corresponding forest cover is only 52 .8 per cent. In the case of Sikkim, the entire state is mountainous but the forest cover is only 44.4 per cent.

Other states and union territories where forest cover is above national average are as follows:

Dadar and Nagar Haveli – 42 per cent

Goa + Daman and Diu – 36.2 per cent

Assam – 31.2 per cent

Madhya Pradesh + Chhattisgarh – 30.5 per cent

Odisha – 30.3 per cent

Kerala – 26.5 per cent

Himachal Pradesh – 23.7 per cent

There are six states where the forest cover is below the national average but above 10 per cent. These states are as follows:

Andhra Pradesh + Telangana – 17.2 per cent

Karnataka – 16.9 per cent

Bihar + Jharkhand – 15.3 per cent

Maharashtra – 14.3 per cent

Tamil Nadu – 13.6 per cent

Uttar Pradesh – 11.5 per cent

Remaining states and union territories have less than 10 per cent forest cover. These states’ forest cover is given below:

West Bengal – 9.2 per cent

Jammu and Kashmir – 9.2 per cent

Gujarat – 6.1 per cent

Chandigarh – 4.4 per cent

Rajasthan - 3.8 per cent

Punjab - 2.7 per cent

Delhi – 1.5 per cent

Haryana – 1.2 per cent

Going by the forest cover, Northwest India can easily be called the Yellow Region of the country. Punjab and Haryana are almost treeless states.

There has been intra-regional variation in the distribution of forest. Such variation is more prominent in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Assam, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh have regions of different topography and consequently the plain areas have very low percentage of forest cover, very much like states of lower average state.

Many districts of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh where forest is below one per cent but Chhotanagpur of Jharkhand and Uttarakhand have higher forest cover. When Jharkhand was part of Bihar then it was a huge contrast to compare the forest cover of Chhotanagpur region and the rest of united Bihar.

While united Bihar’s average forest cover was 15.3 per cent while that of Chhotanagpur was 27 per cent. Same was the case in united Uttar Pradesh, which had an average forest cover of 11.5 per cent with eastern districts bordering Bihar had less than one per cent while Garhwal district had over 40 per cent of forest cover.

It is obvious that the distribution is characterised by inter-regional and intra-regional variations.