GILGIT, June 28: Poverty coupled with flexible legislation, weak civil administration, lenient timber disposal policies, political pressures and lack of awareness among the people of the Northern Areas are main reason that have caused huge deforestation in the region.

This was stated by Northern Areas Conservator of Forests and Wildlife Ghulam Tahir at a Meet the Press Programme of the Gilgit Union of Journalists organized here on Saturday.

Mr Tahir told newsmen that inconsistent policies of successive governments and shortage of personnel in the Forest Department had led to massive deforestation in the region.

He said the total protected forest area in the Northern Areas stood at over 400 square kilometres while farm forests spanned over 2400 square kilometres mainly located in Chilas, Asotre, Darel, Tangir and Jaglote areas. He said the government’s ban on illicit cutting of trees had an opposite effect on forests’ conservation as it encouraged smugglers and smuggling of timber and other precious wood.

He said the government’s faulty policy on deforestation had led to a large scale illicit cutting of forests in Northern Areas, especially the Diamer district green valley was the worst case for example.

He said a forest regeneration plan was on the anvil and after its approval the following steps were likely to be taken:

Increase in forests checkpoints; increase in wages of forest guards; and provision of modern vehicles for forest guards. He said this plan would help restructure the Forest Department on the lines laid-down by Britishers during the British period.

He said the Northern Areas Forest Department revenue in the form of duties and fines stood at Rs700m annually but due to the absence of any authority they could not sanction this fund at local level for development of forests.

About the wildlife, Ghulam Tahir said that there were four national parks in the Northern Areas and through participation of local people they were able to carve out nine community-controlled wildlife sanctuaries.