Frontline | January 21, 2025
Forest cover monitoring in India seems to be stuck in a time loop. Every two years, the India State of Forest Report (ISFR) produced by the Forest Survey of India (FSI) is released with much fanfare by the government, each time showing an infinitesimal increase in the country’s so-called forest cover. And each time, conservationists and independent scientists (including this author) critique it along the same lines: natural forest is not being distinguished from plantations, the decline in dense natural forest cover is overshadowed by the increasing plantation area and the data on legal forest area are inconsistent.
