Use and overexploition

People who live in or near forests know the value of forest resources first-hand ,because their lives and livelihoods depend directly on these resouceces.However,the rest of us also derive great benifits form the forests,which we are rearely aware of.The water we use depands on the istance of forest.we use many medicines that are based on forest produce amd we depend on plants for the oxygin they emit and to remove the carbon dioxide we breath out from the air.

Once upon a time,forests extended over large tracts of our country.People have used forests in our country for thousands of years .With the spread of agriculture,however the forests were left in patches which were controlled mostly by tribal people .They hunted animals and gathered plants and lived entirely on Forest resources.Deforestation became a major concern in British to develop sceintific forestry in India.They however aliented local people by creating Reserved and Protected Forests,which curtailed access to the resources .This led to a loss of stake in the consevations of the forest and to the gradual degraditon and fragmentation of forest across the length and breath of the country .

Another period of overutilization and forest degradation occured in the early period following independence as people felt that after the British had gone they had a right to use our forests in any way they pleased.The following years saw in India's residual forest wealth dwindle sparply.Timber extraction continued to remain the Forest Department's main concern up to the 1970s.The fact that forest degradation and deforestation was creating a serious of renue from timber.