‘Lumding forest gets back 1,410 ha of its land from encroachers’

Guwahati: In a first in Assam where the forest cover has been rapidly shrinking, more than 1,410 hectares of the Lumding Reserve Forest has been restored, said ranger Phanidhar Borgohain.
Last November, the government had evicted 670 families belonging to the Garo, Chakma and Muslim communities for allegedly having occupied land inside the reserve forest since 2011.
Following the eviction drive, the forest department took up plantation at five such locations in Kamarpani, Betnallah, Hazi block, Garubasti and Budhamandir. As a result of that, the Lumding Reserve Forest that runs parallel to NH27 has now become visible to passers-by.
Borgohain said, “After the restoration process, the ecosystem at the Lumding Reserve Forest has started to grow naturally. After the anti-encroachment drive, our first step towards restoration was plantation. Now, we are making ways for animals towards the water holes inside the forest areas. We need to have a strict ban on people’s entry inside the reserve forest without prior permission from the competent authority.”
CM Himanta Biswa Sarma also took to Twitter on October 18 to share the news. “We cleared an encroachment of 1400 ha in Lumding RF in Nov 2021 and took up restoration of the ecosystem on a war footing. Now it’s heartening to see a big herd of elephants marching into this forest. Our govt is committed to protecting wildlife and their precious habitats,” Sarma tweeted.
The forest restoration has also kept wild elephants from straying into nearby human habitations.“Earlier, there were reports of human-elephant conflict in the area, and it was tough for people to travel through that way. After reclaiming the encroached forest land, elephants rarely come outside the highway,” Borgohain added.