Wetlands

Wetlands play an important role for the ecological balance and J&K administration is trying to restore many wetlands.

Recently the Chief Secretary in a high level meeting released a document capturing the restoration plan for Gharana Wetland of Suchetgarh, Jammu. He took note of all the measures taken for restoration of other water bodies like Wular, Mansar, Surinsar and Shalabugh. He advised that the restoration measures for protection of these water bodies should be gauged separately as the Department has both the expertise and resources to do the same. He recalled the measures taken a year back to make Palli Panchayat of District Samba a carbon-neutral village. He maintained that in order to achieve the target of net-zero carbon emissions by 2047 as aspired by the Prime Minister it is essential to have Panchayat level carbon neutral  plans to make this happen within the deadline.

On the occasion the Principal Secretary, Forest, Dheeraj Gupta informed the meeting that the Department is going to complete the demarcation of the vulnerable forest areas by 15th of December this year. He also said that the process of digitisation and geo-referencing of all the forest areas will be achieved by  the end of the current financial year.

The CEO, CAMPA in his presentation gave out that the Department had an original APO outlay of Rs 272 Cr for 2023-24. He further elucidated that in order to achieve the milestones of planting 1.75 Cr saplings, installation of nearly 1,16,266 boundary pillars and digitization and geo-referencing of forest lands it has become imperative to ask for the additional APO to the tune of Rs 53.44 Cr.