The Ama Jungle Yojana (AJY) of the State Government has received wide community acceptance in forest areas and its coverage has extended to 1,58,000 hectares under 23 forest divisions, said an official release on Wednesday.
This was revealed at a high-power committee meeting held under the chairmanship of Chief Secretary AP Padhi at the Secretariat recently Forest and Environment ACS Suresh Mohapatra outlined the issues for discussion.
Padhi directed to intensify alternative livelihood promotion activities in the concerned areas so as to reduce direct dependence of people on the forest. He directed to carry forward the sustainable livelihood activities in convergence with MGNREGS and OLM programmes.
The AJY, which is being implemented by the Odisha Forestry Sector Development Society, is aimed at promoting sustainable forest management in the State on participatory mode with Vana Surakshya Samities (VSS). By now, 3,180 VSSs have been entrusted with responsibility of developing and taking care of around 50 hectares of forest each.
The activities like silvi cultural operations, soil and moisture conservation, fire line tracing, checking of forest fire, natural regeneration, increasing density of degraded forest, assisted natural regeneration, entry point developmental activities in the forest villages etc are taken up through these VSSs. As of now, a total forest area of around 1,33,731 hectares has been treated under natural regeneration and green coverage in 1,010 hectares have been deepened through block plantation.
About 2.05 lakh beneficiaries have been brought into the fold of livelihood activities. Around Rs 217 crore of provisioned amount of Rs 265 crore has been utilized in these activities. It was targeted to cover a total 7,000 VSSs in coming year.