PESHAWAR, Feb 20: Increasing use of wood as fuel by the people living in the forest areas of the NWFP has necessitated the need to arrange an alternative source of fuel to counter a likely extinction of the forests.

According to senior official, about 89 per cent of the wood consumed in the province every year is utilized as fuel for energy while the remaining 11 per cent is used by the construction industry.

The inability of the government to arrange the supply of gas and ensure its round-the-clock supply to the hilly areas of the province owing to shortage of funds and for being low on its list of priorities has expedited the process of the depletion of forest reserves. Thus, the local population is left with no option, but to depend on wood as fuel.

A recently-conducted forest inventory report fears that the forest reserves in the province would vanish by 2027 due to over-exploitation of the reserves.

Sources said though the provincial forest department was preparing a plan, Forestry Sector Vision 2025, to bring more areas under the forest cover (from 17 to 25 per cent of the total area of the province) by 2025, there was an urgent need for making investment to arrange an alternative source of fuel in order to lower pressure on the forest reserves.

“There are certain pockets in the upper and lower Dir districts and other parts previously composing Malakand division, where forest reserves have vanished or are near to extinction due mainly to over-exploitation of wood as the lone source of generating energy in these areas and illegal logging of trees on the part of timber mafia”, a senior government functionary said.

Apart from internal pressures posed by the local population, a greater demand for wood for construction in the down-country was rapidly depleting the forests reserves.

Out of the total 81 million cubic feet (mcf) per annum demand for wood across the country, the NWFP supplies some 10mcf — the biggest supplier of wood to the down-country. Other major contributors are Azad Jammu Kashmir and the Northern Areas.

The sources said that with the increasing use of wood in the construction of residential and commercial buildings across the country, pressure on the forest reserves was on the rise.