PESHAWAR, Nov 10: The use of forest reserve for commercial purpose, heavy consumption of wood as an alternate fuel and timber use in construction works would become extinct the NWFP forests by 2025.

This disclosure was made by the Provincial Forest Resource Inventory (PFRI) in its study on NWFP forests.

The PFRI study said that 75 per cent of the total forest area which was accessible or left un-protected in the province would extinct between 2015 to 2025.

Furthermore, the study found out that there would be no locally available industrial timber for 40 years from 2025 to 2065 when the regeneration planted in the mid eighties of the last century get matured for harvesting.

The PFRI, a heavily guarded secret of the NWFP Forestry, Fisheries and Wildlife department had been financed by the KFW, a German financial institution. It was conducted by a German consortium involving Gesellschaff fur angewandete Fernerkundung (GAF, Munich) and the SIGNUM company (Gottingen).

The satellite imagery interpretation was used as the basic methodology to know the size of area (forest) and its distribution/assessment of land use and forest classification besides a terrestrial forest inventory for assessing the condition of the forests.

Using Landsat TM data in the study, plantation areas that were older than ten years had been identified hence all areas that were planted prior to 1985 were treated as “forest” and were included in the forest classification as “crown coverage”.

The study covers four northern divisions of the NWFP including Malakand, Hazara, Mardan and Peshawar. The remaining three divisions Kohat, Bannu and Dera Ismail Khan were left out for they have negligible forest cover.

The PFRI’s main objectives was to provide maps and basic data on the distribution and condition of the forest resource in NWFP.

To provide input information for the elaboration of sub- regional forest function plan and to contribute relevant information to identify priority action to serve immediate requirements related to the (under progress) forest sector reform process.

The study portrayed a grimmer situation the forests of NWFP were in. It revealed that NWFP’s forest were, apparently, under a serious threat. To save the forest from total disaster it had put forth recommendations for an aggressive reform process.

According to another report, NWFP was losing forest cover at the rate of one per cent annually despite a complete ban on commercial harvesting since 1993.—APP