Bhubaneswar, January 11: The State Level Steering Committee meeting of Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) held on Thursday under the chairmanship of Chief Secretary Pradeep Kumar Jena.
Reviewing in the meeting, Chief Secretary Jena advised to use Drone Technology to study forest cover mapping before and after plantation; after one year and subsequent years.
Development Commissioner-Cum-ACS Anu Garg, Additional Chief Secretary (Revenue, Forest, Environment and Climate Change) Satyabrat Sahu, Principal Secretary, Finance Vishal Kumar Dev, Principal Secretary, PR & DW Sushil Kumar Lohani, Principal Secretary Rural Development Sanjay Kumar Singh, Principal Secretary, Science and Technology Chithra Arumugam,
PCCF & HOFF Debidatta Biswal, PCCF (Wildlife) Sushant Nanda and other members of the Committee were present and participated in the discussion.
PCCF & HOFF Debidatta Biswal outlined the issues and Expenditure of Annual Plan of Operation (APO) for the year 2023-24, fund position of State Authority CAMPA, formulation of APO-2024-25, activities of APO have been reviewed in the meeting.
So far 14 Annual Plan of Operations have been formulated and implemented and 15th is under implementation and APO 2024-25 is the 16th series. Total cumulative outlay from APO 2021-22, 2022-23, 2023-24 was 3230.32 Crore of which Rs 3041.17 crore financial outlay was approved by National Authority (CAMPA) from which Rs 2397.99 crore expenditure have been incurred as on November 30, 2023. It has also revealed that expenditure under APO 2023-24 as on December 31, 2023 has been Rs 644.53 crore.
Major activities carried out include compensatory afforestation, integrated wildlife management programme, wild life management, plantation under NPV, Bamboo regeneration, Forest protection and Forest Fire prevention, Ama Jangal Yojana, Infrastructure Development, Forest IT & Geometrics, Monitoring and evaluation, silvicultural research, production of QPM etc.
Annual plan of operation (APO)-2024-25 was presented for approval in the meeting. Rs 1044.47 crore have been proposed for mandatory activities like plantation maintenance, compensatory afforestation, implementation of Regional Wild Life Management Plan, Site specific WL projects, regeneration of degraded bamboo, Forest protection, fire prevention, WL Management, AJY, Infrastructure, Research, capacity building etc.
This has been formulated basing on the funds available with State Authority and proposals received from implementing Divisions. Proposed area for Compensatory afforestation in APO 2024-25 is 7174.203 Ha. New plantation under Artificial Regeneration (AR) will be 17197 Ha. and under Assisted Natural Regeneration (ANR) will be of 1675.5 Ha. CAMPA is carrying out sustainability plan for 10 years maintenance & CAMPA Forest coverage is large.
The Chief Secretary also advised that during and after 10 years of plantation management, how much ground water recharge achieved and soil erosion prevented that has to be accessed.
He also instructed that there is need for plantation to support livelihood of the area concerned and it should be done with planned design. Local community, Vana Surakhya Samities are to be involved for protection from forest fire in coordination with forest guards.
Training programmes for some days should be arranged for drivers who are carrying tourists to the Biosphere Reserves & similar forest areas so that there shall be responsible travel which will help more to conserve the environment, though most of. them are aware of it.
