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deep ravines such as the Pagla Jhora, the Seti-Khola Slip, etc., which are now completely stopped. In Kalimpong the Geological Department have been asked to advise with reference to stopping bad slips.

Assam.-The Shillong Pine Forests clothe the catchment area and are maintained primarily for this purpose. In the Naga Hills certain areas of natural forest are protected to ensure the water supply, and no fellings take place.

Bihar and Orissa.-Proposals have been made to acquire land in the Damodar River Catchment Area (Damodar Valley Scheme) for the purpose of afforestation in order to regulate the flow of water in the river. The catchment area has a scrub growth on it. Afforestation is considered to be practicable and would stop the destructive floods which sweep down into the country below.

Madras.-Reboisement work is being undertaken in the Kundah Reserve in the Nilgiris, where a system has recently been inaugurated under which an attempt is made to regulate fires so as to prevent them destroying the evergreen shola growth. A certain amount of sowing and planting of various kinds of trees has been done with a view to restore the sholas destroyed by fire.

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CHAPTER XVIII

THE PROGRESS OF WORKING PLANS IN INDIA AND BURMA,

W

1901-25

HEREAS the practice of sylviculture has in the past few years witnessed a highly commendable renaissance in India, the same remark cannot unfortunately be applied to that important branch, Working Plans. With the exception of certain Provinces, the progress as a whole, when it is remembered that the department has been in existence for sixty years, cannot be termed satisfactory. Few would be found to dispute the point that the time has arrived when every forest in the country should be under a Working Plan. Its nature may be simple, but it should embody definite prescriptions with annual control forms to be submitted to the Controlling Authority. Mere plans of operation or five-yearly schemes offer no safe guarantee that a forest is under effective management or that the growing stock is not either being overor under-felled. Moreover, the prescriptions of such plans are usually based on insufficient data, and are easily modified by the Civil Officer or the Divisional Officer with the assent of his Conservator. Furthermore they do not lay down a sufficiently definite working scheme for the forest area as a whole. In other words, a young Forest Officer with a correct knowledge of Forest Management, even if mainly theoretical at his present stage in the Service, may well exclaim that he does "not know what he is working for or what the management is aiming at." The mere prescription to work so many compartments or so much area during the next five or ten years, with improvement fellings over so much more, cannot be designated scientific forestry or the scientific working of an area. Even if a considerable tract is at present inaccessible, and therefore unworkable, it does not militate against its inclusion in a Working Plan as an at present unworkable Working Circle. The Working

Circle or Circles which can be exploited will be stock mapped, the description of the growing stock defines the degree of the enumeration undertaken, depending on the intensity of the plan; the area is divided into the desired number of felling series; Periodic Block I selected and Periodic Block II, if possible, indicated and order and a scientific management, however simple, has been introduced into the working of a forest area and the staff know what they are about and the objects to be achieved. Further progress is then not only possible but a matter of certainty. Many of us never witnessed this introduction of scientific management, and there appears to be at the present moment far too large an area of forest into which this preliminary management has not been yet introduced in India, as this chapter will demonstrate.

Mayes (Chief Conservator, Punjab) strikes the right note in the following: "Moreover, intensive working of a forest and intensive sylviculture are both impossible for areas which have not been placed under Working Plans. The longer this essential to correct forest management is delayed and the greater the period which elapses, the greater will be the delay in securing the full benefits of the intensive utilization which follows an intensive sylviculture."

It has become apparent that those Provinces which have appointed Conservators of a Working Plans Circle have made the most notable advance. It will be generally admitted that rapid progress on up-to-date lines in India is impracticable in the absence of such a head to co-ordinate the work. Under present-day conditions the Conservator and Divisional Officer are very fully occupied with their administrative and territorial duties. Work of all kinds is more intensive, as is exemplified by the splitting up of areas formerly constituting single Divisions into two, three or four separate charges under separate Divisional Officers, which has been so marked a feature of recent progress. This of itself has brought into being an extra amount of urgent work for the Working Plans Officer.

The position to which the different Provinces have arrived in this important branch will now be considered.

1. WORKING PLANS IN THE UNITED PROVINCES
AND OUDH

The United Provinces and Oudh have for long held the premier place in this field. The comparatively small areas of

the charges, when compared to those in other Provinces, the large population and consequent demand for materials, and perhaps to some extent the presence of the Forest School at Dehra Dun with the staff attached to it, led to the earlier introduction of Working Plans into the Province. The Director of the School was also Conservator of the School Circle for a number of years.

The area of forest under Working Plans, mostly of the selection type, in 1900 was 3448 square miles out of a total area of 4122 square miles of forest in the Province, and plans were being prepared for 222 square miles. In 1910-11 the area under Working Plans was 3779 square miles and plans were being prepared for 34 square miles. The next decade witnessed a revolution both in sylviculture, as already detailed, and in Working Plans. The old Working Plans, based on the mis-named Selection System with the old type of improvement fellings, were revised and new plans were drafted, based on such scientific systems of forest management as Clear Felling, Shelter Wood Compartment (Uniform) and Selection-cumImprovement, and yield tables for the more important gregarious species were in preparation. The modern Working Plan was, in fact, being based on scientific data instead of (mainly) guesswork.

The area of the forests under the Department was extended by the tentative formation of the Kumaun Circle sanctioned for three years on 2nd October, 1912. This step was mainly due to the initiative of the Lieutenant-Governor, Sir John Hewett, those forests having been previously under the Civil Department. The addition comprised an area of 3400 square miles.

In 1920-1, therefore, the total area of forest was 7442 square miles, out of which 4226 were under Working Plans, whilst Plans were under preparation for 2727 square miles, chiefly in Kumaun.

In 1923-4 the Department in this Province was in the eminently satisfactory position of having all the forests of the Province, with the exception of the Kumaun Circle, under Working Plans, many of these being intensive plans, the old ones having been revised within recent years. The total area of these plans covered 3964 square miles. This area included 17 square miles, mostly in the Afforestation Division, for which plans were not at the time required. Out of the total area in Kumaun, 3400 square miles, some 2139 square miles are

under intensive Working Plans, and for another 568 square miles the plans were nearly completed early in 1925. The remaining forest area of the Province consists of elevated or inaccessible areas for which plans are not at present required. Statistical tables of yield have been prepared for such species as sâl, deodar and Pinus longifolia.

This record in so essentially important a side of forest management is an excellent one and is a striking testimony to the high efficiency of the work carried out by former generations of officers in the Province. For an intensive Working Plan has usually to be preceded by one of a simpler nature, which has to be worked with knowledge if the area is to progress to higher things. The present satisfactory position may also be ascribed to the wisdom of the liberal policy of the Government in sanctioning the temporary posts of a Conservator of Working Plans and a Provincial Sylviculturist in 1920. These posts, subsequently confirmed in 1922, have been held by Messrs. Trevor and Smythies respectively. The Working Plans Circle has five Working Plans Officers on the cadre. The Chief Conservator and Working Plans Conservator select the Working Plans for revision and the former nominates the officers for the work as required. The Sylvicultural and Research Division is under the Conservator, Working Plans Circle, the Afforestation Division being also in this Circle. The Sylviculturist has two assistants. The work embraces regeneration experiments, artificial and natural, and the statistical work in connection with sample plots and the collection of data for the preparation of volume tables, etc.

Details of several of the more intensive Working Plans in force in the Province have been already given in the chapter on Sylviculture.

In Collier's "Conversion" to Uniform Plan of 1914 for the Haldwani Division there was one felling series and six periodic blocks of twenty years, subsequently altered by amalgamation into three periodic blocks of forty years each. The annual yield was fixed in Periodic Block I by volume, based on a complete enumeration of all sâl over 3-foot girth in the block; in Periodic Block II by area (thinning with improvement fellings), and in Periodic Block III also by area (removal or girdling of the remaining overwood and thinning in the young sapling and pole crop). The structure of this plan proved very satisfactory in its practical application. It showed a very great advance on previous sâl Working Plans and, with necessary modifications, it has been adopted for later plans in other divisions.

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