In a mere 10-year period, between 1979 and 1989, the 22.24-sq km pristine forest, located at the tri-juncture of Assam, Arunachal Pradesh and Bhutan, was reduced to just sand, gravel and dead stumps of trees by a combination of illegal felling and a succession of floods. This is the story of the Bhairabkunda reserve forest, in Udalguri district of northern Assam.
“As young boys, we had seen a thick forest here. But over the years, we were also witness to how it disappeared. The felling and the floods decimated the forest,” says Daimary, 52, now secretary of the Getsemani Joint Forest Management Committee (JFMC), which was behind the massive afforestation project that has since rejuvenated the reserve. This drive started in 2003.
Read more of this in a report by Samudra Gupta Kashyap published in The Indian Express...
