Haritha Haram takes Telangana to 2nd spot in green cover increase

Hyderabad: The Telangana government’s flagship programme – Haritha Haram – to increase green cover in the State, has proved to be a runaway success with the State placed in the second spot in the country for its increase in forest cover by 632 sqkm. The State achievement aside, Hyderabad has topped the mega cities that […]

Hyderabad: The Telangana government’s flagship programme – Haritha Haram – to increase green cover in the State, has proved to be a runaway success with the State placed in the second spot in the country for its increase in forest cover by 632 sqkm.

The State achievement aside, Hyderabad has topped the mega cities that gained maximum green cover with 48.66 sqkm in a decade in the country. This is no mean achievement considering the fact that Telangana was a parched dry land till State formation in 2014.

According to the India State of Forest Report 2021, which was released by Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Bhupender Yadav on Thursday. The biennial assessment of forest cover of the country was prepared by Forest Survey of India (FSI), which has been mandated to assess the forest and tree resources of the country.

According to the report, increase in forest cover has been observed in open forest followed by very dense forest. The top three states showing increase in forest cover are Andhra Pradesh (647 sqkm) followed by Telangana (632 sqkm) and Odisha (537 sqkm).

Among the mega cities, maximum gain in forest cover was witnessed in Hyderabad at 48.66 sq kms, followed by Delhi 19.91 sq kms. Significantly, as per the report, Ahmedabad and Bengaluru lost forest cover of 8.55 sqkm and 4.98 sqkm respectively.

The ambitious Telangana Ku Haritha Haram programme was launched by the State government in 2015 with the goal of raising plantation of 230 crores. As on November, 2021, the plantation achievement has been 239.441 crores.

Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao had, on October 1, 2021, announced in the State Assembly the setting up of “Telangana Haritha Nidhi,” a dedicated Green Fund aimed at enhancing the massive plantation activity and to provide sustainability in the long run.
The State Government constituted a seven-member State level Committee on Telangana Haritha Nidhi with the Forest Minister as its Chairman to effectively manage the fund and implement the plantation activities.

Forest cover Inside and Outside Recorded Forest Area in the State have also been analysed as part of the report. Accordingly, the Very Dense Forest (VDF) inside the recorded forest area is 1,551 sq kms (8.30 per cent), Moderate Dense Forest (MDF) is 8,651 sq kms (46.27 per cent), Open Forest (OF) is 8,494 sq kms (45.43 per cent). Similarly, the VDF cover outside Recorded Forest area is 73 sq kms (2.90 per cent), MDF is 468 sq kms (18.59 per cent) and OF is 1,977 sq kms (78.51 per cent).

The accuracy level achieved in the current assessment is significantly high as the accuracy of forest cover classification has been assessed 92.99 per cent. The accuracy of classification between forest and non-forest classes has been assessed 95.79 per cent against internationally accepted accuracy of classification of more than 85 per cent.

District wise Forest cover in Telangana (in sq.kms)
District VDF MDF OF % of Geographical area change (2019)

Adilabad: 150.25 3244.05 2349.12 35.66 22.10
Hyderabad: 0.00 4.91 13.09 8.29 -0.68
Karimnagar: 74.50 854.59 1276.93 18.66 217.81
Khammam: 730.06 2292.84 1485.81 33.99 29.57
Mahabubnagar: 336.32 633.51 1340.46 12.53 9.24
Medak: 0.00 120.11 652.19 7.96 32.99
Nalgonda: 0.15 23.11 494.93 3.64 103.75
Nizamabad: 0.09 253.80 977.98 15.48 35.58
Rangareddy: 0.02 146.10 659.99 10.76 35.69
Warangal: 332.51 1545.66 1220.90 24.12 145.62

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