PESHAWAR, May 16: In the presence of a number of projects and working papers drawn to conserve and enhance forest cover in the NWFP, the provincial forest department is working out yet another strategy to increase forest cover in the province by bringing two million acres additional area under forest, according to sources.

The seven-page draft policy being described as “NWFP Forest Vision 2025”, a copy of which is also available with Dawn, envisages to enhance the ratio of forest to the presently claimed 17 per cent to 25 per cent during the next 25 years.

According to the plan an additional area of two million acres in the NWFP would be brought under forest by the year 2025 apart from conserving the standing forest resource. According to a survey recently conducted with the financial support of international donor agencies, the existing forest reserves of the province NWFP would vanish by the year 2025 and there would be no locally available wood for industrial usage in the province by the year 2065 due to over exploitation and rampant cutting of forests.

Another study conducted by some other foreign donor agencies revealed that the NWFP forests were getting deleted by one per cent annually leaving the existing forest reserves under tremendous threat.

“It (Forest vision 2025) is more to be an exercise in futile after the prevalent provincial forest policy formulated by the last provincial government, contains enough to conserve and enhance the forest cover in the province,” a district official said.

The new strategy envisages expansion of forest cover primarily through social forestry approaches — already in practice in the forest rich parts of NWFP previously forming Hazara division.

To achieve the task of bringing additional two million  acres  under  forest cover,  the internationally practised principles of Village Land Use Planning (VLUP) would be relied upon. Under the scheme some 500 villages out of 5,000 villages existed of the province would be brought under forest cover.

“The process will be expanded further to other villages during the remaining period of the Vision 2025,” contained the draft of the project.

Commenting on the objective of bringing all the 5,000 villages under forest during the next 25 years, forest experts working in an important non-governmental organization termed the  same as elusive and difficult to achieve. However, the draft strategy claimed that “as bulk of the area lies in low rainfall zone, arid zone forestry techniques with emphasis on water harvesting and conservation practices will be standardized and pursued under Research and Development Programme of the department.”