The Rise Of Commercial Forestry
The British Government was worried about the use of forests by local people and felling of trees by the contractors carelessly. These activities destroyed the forests rapidly.
So, the British Government appointed a German expert, Dietrich Brandis as the first Inspector-General of Forests in India. He realised that a proper system had to be introduced to manage the forests and people had to be trained in the science of conservation. Rules about the use of forest resources had to be framed. Felling of trees and grazing had to be restricted, so that forests could be preserved for timber production. Anybody who cut trees without following the system had to be punished.
All these efforts of Brandis, gave rise to Indian Forest Act, 1865.
Indian Forest Act,1865
Dietrich Brandis set up the Indian Forest Service in 1864 and helped formulate the Indian Forest Act of 1865.
The Imperial Forest Research Institute was set up at Dehradun in 1906. It was first forestry school to be inaugurated in British Empire. The system they taught here was called Scientific Forestry.
In scientific forestry, natural forests which had lots of different types of trees were cut down and in their place, one type of trees was planted in straight rows. This is known as plantation. For example, cultivation of poplar trees which are good for timber.
Forest officials surveyed the forests and made working plans for forest management. They planned how much of the plantation area is to be cut every year. The cleared area was then to be replanted so that it would be ready to cut again in some years. The Forest Act of 1865, was amended twice, once in 1878 and then in 1927. These were the forests which produced commercially valuable timber. No Pastoralist was allowed access to these forests.
The Indian Forest Act, 1878, divided forest into three categories, viz reserved, protected and village forests. The best forests were called Reserved Forests.
Effect Of Forest Act On Lives Of People
The Forest Act meant extreme hardship for villagers and forest people across the country. Villagers could not take anything from these forests for their own use. For house building or fuel, they could take wood from protected or village forests. Villagers wanted forests to satisfy different needs like fuel, fodder, leaves, etc. The Forest Department wanted trees for building ships and railways. For these purposes, they needed particular species like teak and sal. So these species were promoted and other species of trees had been cut down.
After the Forest Act, cutting wood for homes, collection of fuel wood, grazing the cattles, collecting fruits and roots, hunting and fishing all became illegal. Forest guards take the bribes from the people if they were caught while stealing wood from forest.
In forest areas, people use many forest products as food or as medicine. They used roots, leaves, fruits, tubers etc for many things. Fruits and tubers are nutritious to eat, especially during the monsoons before the harvest has come in.
Herbs are used for medicine, wood for agricultural implements like yokes and ploughs, bamboo makes excellent fences and it is also used to make baskets and umbrellas. A dried scooped-out gourd can be used as a portable water bottle.
Almost everything is available in the forest. Leaves can be stitched together to make disposable plates and cups, the siadi (Bauhinia vahlii) creeper can be used to make ropes and the thorny bark of the semur (silk-cotton) tree is used to grate vegetables. Oil for cooking and to light lamps can be pressed from the fruit of the mahua (Madhuca indica) tree. Mahua flowers can be eaten or used to make alcohol.
The major impact of forest laws was the ban on shifting cultivation or swidden agriculture.
In shifting cultivation, parts of the forest are cut and burnt in rotation. Seeds are sown in ashes after the first monsoon rain and the crops is harvested by October-November.
Such plots are cultivated for a couple of years and then left fallow for 12 to 18 years for the forest to grow back. A mixture of crops is grown on these plots.
The shifting cultivation has many local names, like lading in South East Asia, milpa in Central America, chitemene or tavy in Africa, chena in Sri Lanka. In India also it has many local names like, dhya, penda, bewar, nevad, jhum, podh, khandad, Kumri, etc.
Banning of Shifting Cultivation
European foresters regarded the practice of shifting cultivation was harmful for the forests. When a forest was burnt always there was a danger of spreading flames and burning valuable timbers. Shifting cultivation made it more difficult for the government to calculate taxes.
So, the British Government decided to ban shifting cultivation. As a result, some communities were forcibly displaced from their homes. Some of them had to change their occupations, while some revolted against the law.
Taungya Cultivation
It was a system in which local farmers were allowed to cultivate temporarily within a plantation. When the cultivators were sowing paddy, the men made holes in the soil using long bamboo poles with iron tips.
The women sowed paddy in each hole.
Prohibition on Hunting after Forest Act
Before the forest laws, many people who lived in or near forests had survived by hunting deer, partridges and a variety of small animals. This practice of hunting was prohibited by the new forest law. Those who were caught hunting were punished. This illegal hunting was termed as poaching by colonisers.
The forest law deprived the forest dwellers of their customary rights to hunt. Under colonial rule, the scale of hunting increased largely and as a result many animals became almost extinct. The Britishers saw large animals as sign of wild, primitive and savage society.
They ‘believed that by killing dangerous animals they would civilise India. They gave rewards for the killings of tigers, wolves and other large animals so that there would be no threat to cultivators.
Initially, certain areas of forests were conserved for hunting. Later, environmentalists and conservators begin to argue that all these species of animals needed to be protected and not killed.
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