Principal Conservator of Forests Dr RBS Rawat has disclosed that owing to the special efforts made by the Chief Minister, Vijay Bahuguna, the Union Forest and Environment Ministry has established a camp office of the Central Office, lucknow, at the FRI, here, by an order issued on 19 July, 2013. The camp office will deal speedily with issues of forest land use change. This would benefit the State as a whole.
According to him, under an order of the Union Forest and Environment Ministry dated 24 July under the ‘Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980, permission had been granted to the camp office to decide on land use change of upto 5 hectare land against the 1 hectare permitted earlier, for a period of one year, on proposals made by the Nodal Officer, Forest Conservation.
Permission had also been granted under the act to change forest land use within certain guidelines for setting up communications, roads, bridges, ropeways and helipads in the flood affected areas. Each case would be dealt with on the recommendation of the Nodal Officer to the Camp Office. The State Government would benefit from these decisions of the Central Government.