Highlights of State of Forest Report-2017

Key Information

Forest Survey of India (FSI) has been assessing the forest and tree resources of our country since 1987. The Indian State Forest Report (ISFR) is published for every two years. The results of the assessment are published in its biennial report titled “India State of Forest Report (ISFR)”
The 2017 report is more comprehensive than the previous one as it is based on information from 633 districts compared with 589 covered in the 2015 report.
The latest ISFR report includes information about water bodies in forests, a new feature.

Total forest cover in India is 24.39 per cent of the geographical area of the country.
India’s total forest cover increased by 0.94 per cent in the last two years
In terms of forest area rank of India in the world is 10th. It is 8th in terms of annual forest gain.
In 2015 India’s total forest cover is 7, 01,673 square kilometers and in 2017 report it is increased to 7, 08,273 square kilometers. At present

The total forest and tree cover is 24.39 per cent of the geographical area of the country
According to the report, at present 15 states and Union territories have more than 33% of their GA under forest cover.

According to the report Madhya Pradesh has the largest forest cover (77, 414 sq. km), followed by Arunachal Pradesh (66,964 sq. km), Chhattisgarh (55,547 sq. km) Odisha (51, 345 sq. km) and Maharashtra (50,682 sq. km).
But the forest area in all these states, except Odisha, has decreased since 2015.

The top five states where forest cover grew are

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

The total mangrove cover stands at 4,921 sq km and has shown an increase of 181 sq km from 2015 to 2017.
The increase in forest cover has been observed in very dense forests.
The only category that has registered a decline in the latest assessment is the Moderate Dense Forest.
In the north-eastern states maximum forest cover reduction has been seen in Mizoram (531 sq km), Nagaland (450 sq km) and Arunachal Pradesh (190 sq km).

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