The Hindu : Business : Country headed for timber famine: expert

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Nov 10, 2005

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Country headed for timber famine: expert

Staff Reporter

PEECHI (THRISSUR): The forest scientist E.K. Sadanandan Nambiar has warned that the country is headed for a `timber famine' because of the heavy demand for wood-based products and the fast declining forest resources.

Dr. Nambiar, who is chief research scientist at the Australia-based Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), gave the warning while delivering the keynote address at a workshop on `Site management of exotic plantations in southern India: Prospects for improving productivity' at the Kerala Forest Research Institute (KFRI) here on Tuesday.

Pressure on land

Pointing out that it will not be possible to depend on natural forest for the increased demand for timber, Dr. Nambiar said it would also be difficult to rapidly expand the area of plantation forests because of the pressure on land and other environmental considerations. The desirable option then is to increase the productivity of the existing plantation forests by taking all precautions to minimise the environmental damage, he said.

Dr. Nambiar, who is the spokesman for the Australian Government on forestry-related issues, said that in Australia plantation forestry accounted for only two per cent of the total cultivated area while it accounted for nearly 60 per cent of the total timber production in the country. This is because of the high levels of productivity of the forest plantations there.

According to Dr. Nambiar, India, which has more than 30 million hectares of plantation forests, has a tremendous potential to augment the productivity of the sector through effective site management practices.

Environmental impact

Later replying to questions from presspersons, Dr. Nambiar said the environmental impact of plantation forests would depend on ``where you locate them and how you manage them. If you locate forest plantations in the catchments of a river or in a steep slope it could be dangerous.''

According to him, there is no scientific evidence to substantiate the widespread fears that eucalypts draws more water than other plantation trees.

Speaker Therambil Ramakrishnan, who inaugurated the workshop, jointly organised by the KFRI, Ensis Forests and the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), said the scientific community must strive to diffuse the confusion caused by conflicting findings on the impact of eucalypts plantations. Some are of the opinion that eucalypts plantations can even dry the entire State.

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