CHAPTER XIX

THE INTRODUCTION AND GROWTH OF FOREST WORKING

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PLANS IN INDIA, 1871-1900

HE credit of having been the first to introduce a simple form of forest working plan in India must be ascribed to Mr. Munro, who was Conservator or Superintendent of Forests in Travancore in the 'twenties and 'thirties of the nineteenth century. Munro had made some study of the teak and its rate of growth, as has been detailed in Vol. I, pp. 73-4, his figures being based, as he says, on his "own personal observation and the experience of nearly twenty years in the woods." He makes some scathing remarks on the subject of the unchecked, reckless and wasteful felling by contractors in the Malabar Forests, and added that a Parsee contractor had commenced the same devastating methods in some Travancore Forests, operations which Munro was able to have stopped. That Munro was working his forests with some knowledge, based on a computation of their contents-in other words, that he had a simple form of working plan in force for teak-is evidenced by his estimate in 1837 that he would have " 100,000 trees fit to cut that season. Nowhere else in India at that period, or for long afterwards, could such a forecast have been given with any pretence at real accuracy.

We have seen that at a later date Cleghorn, during the period he was Conservator in Madras, endeavoured to obtain figures of the contents of the remaining teak forests with the object of checking over-felling.

In Burma the first officer who attempted to obtain figures on the rate of growth of teak in the Tenasserim Forests was Captain Tremenheere (vide I, p. 158); and Captains O'Brien and Guthrie made some attempts to carry on this work in the same Province.

It was McClelland in Pegu who first suggested the safeguarding of the forests from over-cutting by adopting a definite

girth limit, based on an estimate of the quantity of trees of this size and over in the forests; fellings not to take place in the areas until such an estimate had been made. The trees were to be marked and girdled by the officers of the Department only, and no immature trees were to be felled; severe penalties to be inflicted in case of infringement. This suggestion had, it is true, been put forward in the past in Tenasserim, so far as the size of the trees to be cut was concerned, but the rules sanctioned by Government had never been obeyed or enforced. The Commissioner, Captain Phayre, did not agree with all McClelland's proposals and the latter resigned, to be followed by Brandis.

Brandis, we may be sure, had made himself acquainted with the Reports and literature available on the management of the forests in Madras (Cleghorn), Bombay (Gibson) and in Burma itself.

He would have, therefore, been aware of the attempts which had been made so far to check the wasteful exploitation which was in force. Brandis also started his work with Lord Dalhousie's clear pronouncement on the right of ownership of the Government to the teak forests of Pegu. This position, however, in no way diminishes the credit belonging to Brandis in introducing a first fairly accurate method of ascertaining the growing stock of the forests by his linear surveys, and framing what was, in fact, the first working plan for their management.

Theoretically, the strict and defined administration of a forest under a working plan would appear to necessitate as a preliminary factor a full knowledge of the sylviculture of the species of tree being grown, combined with a variety of other data based on the results of detailed scientific forestry research. Such research, as will be shown in a subsequent chapter, had not been attempted up to the close of the century. But the want of adequate knowledge, or better expressed, of detailed knowledge, on the subject of the species of trees, need not, and should not, delay or preclude the placing of forest areas under the prescriptions of a working plan; the detail with which the plan is drawn depending upon the data available and the demand for the products of the forests. Too often in the history of the management of the forests of our Empire, often from want of the necessary amount of scientific training on the part of senior officers and the paucity of staff, combined with the ignorance on the part of the

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other civil authorities the introduction of working plans has been delayed on the supposition that only when the forests had been restored to something like normality could such plans be introduced. Or, again, the proposition has been advanced that the preparation of such plans could only be justified when a demand for the produce from the area, with a resultant revenue, had arisen. Too often, however, in the latter case a sudden demand upon the forest, such as may be produced by the advent of the construction of a railway in its neighbourhood or through it, the cutting out and ruin of the forest has preceded the introduction of the working plan.

In the past it was not always realised that the prescriptions of a plan might be quite simple, and yet once in force they would safeguard the area placed under the plan from the danger of further deterioration. In India this lesson has been learnt, although the recognition by the Local Governments of the necessity of placing their forests under working plans was slow, the necessary funds were grudged and the forest staffs far too small to enable progress to keep pace with the urgency of this important matter.

Outside India the rest of the British Empire has, for the most part, yet to realise the imperative necessity of putting an end to waste and ignorance in the treatment of the bulk of the forests by recording and settling all rights in and over the forests and then placing them under the safeguard of the working plan.

It will be asked by those who have not received a scientific forestry training, What is a working plan? It is a statement drawn up for a certain area of forest land, laying down and prescribing the whole of the operations which are to be carried out within the area for a definite number of years, i.e. it prescribes the whole management of the area, having in view the objects required from the area and assuming their realisation to the fullest extent possible.

In the description of Brandis' work during the years he acted as Superintendent or Conservator of Forests in Pegu, given in Vol. I, Chapter XX, it has been shown that one of the first tasks he set himself after joining his appointment was to ascertain, by means of the linear Valuation Survey method, the available growing stock present in the forests of his charge. This work he at first undertook personally, but as it proceeded he trained his assistants, both European and native, to assist him in the work. The advisability and, in

fact, necessity of working the forests systematically had been advocated in some quarters in India for some time before Brandis' arrival in the country, but what was really meant, or aimed at, by such working was understood by but a very few, and probably even these few had very little idea of the amount of work involved in framing an estimate of the contents of a large forest. On the basis of the estimates framed by Brandis, and of the analysis of the rates of growth on numerous stumps and logs, he calculated the annual possibility of his forests, and was thus in a position to prepare preliminary working plans for the areas. Brandis' working plans for Pegu were of necessity, in view of the paucity of data and staff available at the time, drawn up on somewhat general lines, but they were prepared with great care and rarely erred on the side of over-exploitation. These plans, with subsequent revisions, remained the guiding factor in Burma for many years after Brandis had left the Province, In fact, so ably were they drafted that more detailed investigations in later years showed that, in many cases, little deviation was required. And in others they gave proof of the caution displayed by proving that a larger yield could be obtained from certain forests than he had previously estimated.

After his appointment as Inspector-General of Forests, as has been indicated elsewhere, several Conservators with Brandis' assistance undertook the work of conducting linear surveys in other forests of India, upon which preliminary working plans were prepared. For this work later on Brandis was able to avail himself of the services of Schlich and Ribbentrop. This was the beginning of the introduction of simple working plans in India, and gradually, as the number of professionally trained Forest Officers increased, the collection of data and the preparation of working plans on more systematic lines proceeded in various provinces, the chief of which were the North-West Provinces, Punjab, and Burma. The work was, however, still spasmodic and unsystematised, and no control by the Central Authority existed. As a natural outcome, even where plans were in force, deviations were made from them without the sanction of the Central Authority, at the will of the Conservator or of the Divisional Officer. Of course, this state of affairs meant that a plan might be in force for an area and yet remain practically a dead letter. This position came about owing to the decentralisation of the Department in 1882. As we have seen, soon after the formation

of the Department the officers were placed on one general list, and all forest receipts and charges were Imperial. The Local Governments, under this system, had no direct financial interest in the working of the forests in their provinces, nor in their Forest Officers, who looked to the Inspector-General of Forests for praise and promotion. Under this system control of the young Department and of the working plans in force was fairly efficient. With the decentralisation of the Department the Local Governments had a direct interest in the financial result of the forests within their jurisdiction, and officers showing a good surplus received due recognition in the Resolutions on the Annual Reports. This led in many instances to neglect of the provisions of the working plans in force, and not infrequently to over-exploitation of valuable forests in the interests of revenue production.

In the valuable sâl forests in Oudh, for instance, the annual outturn was forestalled for many years. From the Local Government point of view working plans were discredited, and in some cases at least were regarded as unnecessary and a serious infliction on the ryots of the district. This position. led Forest Officers to be suspected by their superiors of a tendency or wish to over-exploit their forests, with the object of attaining credit from their Local Governments. Ribbentrop mentions that when in charge of an area of departmentally worked forests in Burma he was suspected of a tendency to over-fell. In explanation he wrote: "As a matter of fact, I was in possession of a more efficient and energetic staff than my predecessors, comprising such officers as Messrs. H. Hill, W. Oliver and Popert, who have all made a name for themselves in the annals of forestry in India, and we gleaned the forests of dead timber that had been left behind, and removed mature trees from the narrow bands (embankments) between paddy (rice) fields; and only increased the outturn from reserves, when detailed enquiry proved this to be admissible."

With these disabilities to be faced, combined with the smallness of the staff and the heavy work involved in settlement and demarcation, the introduction of fire protection and so forth, it is not surprising that at the end of 1884-5 only 109 square miles of reserves under the Government of India were under regularly sanctioned working plans, and but a very small area in Bombay and practically none in Madras. This being the position of affairs, it became obvious that both the Government of India and the Inspector-General o