While presiding over a review meeting of the Forest Department and H.P. State Forest Development Corporation here last evening, Chief Minister Thakur Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu said that timely extraction of dried-out trees from forest land was the need of the hour to generate revenue before they get decomposed. He directed the officers to formulate a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) to ensure effective marking, extraction and disposal of salvage trees. He also stressed for developing a website for the online sale of timber.
The Chief Minister said that presently, the State has approximately 86,874 salvage trees on the forest land, expected to produce around 64,000 cubic meters of timber. He emphasized the monthly marking of these trees on forest land to facilitate their timely extraction and disposal. He expressed the importance of systematic progress in this endeavour to make timber a valuable source of state revenue. The non-extraction of salvage trees on time has resulted in revenue losses, he said.
Sukhu directed the forest department and HP Forest Development Corporation to collaborate each other for timely extraction of dried out trees. He suggested granting the Forest Department the authority to mark, fell and convert trees into logs, with a cap of 50 trees, for early disposal on a pilot basis in certain forest ranges of lower parts of the State. The Chief Minister also emphasized the need for staff rationalization in HP Forest Development Corporation. He assured that the state government would address the issue of staff shortages by implementing appropriate measures.
Principal Advisor (IT and Innovations), Gokul Butail, MLAs, Devender Bhutto, Chaitanya Sharma, Ashish Sharma, HP Forest Development Corporation Vice Chairman, Kehar Singh Khachi, Principal Secretary Forest, Onkar Chand Sharma, Principal Chief Conservator of Forest, Rajeev Kumar, Managing Director H.P. State Forest Development Corporation, Pawnesh Kumar, Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forest, Nagesh Guleria and other senior officers of the department were also present in the meeting.
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