Pandemic curbs fuel timber smuggling in Kashmir forests
Forest department workers seized 4,342 cubic feet of wood in the past two months
India’s coronavirus lockdown has paved the way for a rise in illegal logging and timber-smuggling in forest-rich Indian-administered Kashmir, with guards unable to patrol and local incomes plummeting, the region’s forest officials said.
The damage to forests was particularly high during the first few weeks of the strict lockdown, which began on March 25 and has been eased since late May.
“There was a spike in incidents of timber-smuggling because of the lockdown, but it doesn’t mean our staff completely failed to act,” said Mohit Gera, principal chief conservator of forests, speaking by phone from his office in Jammu.
Forest department workers seized 4,342 cubic feet of timber from smugglers in the past two months, as well as confiscating 13 vehicles and 41 horses, and filed 103 police reports against 306 perpetrators, Gera added.
Those responsible included habitual timber-smugglers who take the wood to sell for construction and other private uses, as well as people who recently turned to felling trees because they lost their work during the pandemic, officials said.
No work
Nazir Ahmad, president of the Kashmir forest employees’ union, said more than 320 colleagues had been injured during the lockdown in attacks by smugglers using their hands or sticks.
A forest official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said not only sawn timber had been smuggled from forests, but also small trees and the tops of trees.
Some people were taking them to sell as firewood to families for the winter, he added.
Gera said that with most people having no work during the Covid-19 lockdown, “a few of them get so desperate that they think of smuggling forest products”.
The Kashmir forest department says that, in the past five years, it has been successful in restoring and protecting the region’s forests, which cover about 816,400 hectares, even achieving a small net increase in its forested area.