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| Qazi for comprehensive awareness to conserve green gold | | Forest Protection must to avert ecological catastrophe: Experts | |
Srinagar, May 11
Underscoring need for coordinated and integrated approach to protect and conserve forest wealth, Minister for Forest, Environment, Housing and Urban Development Qazi Mohammad Afzal said massive awareness campaign is required to drive home significance of forests for life process. “An awareness campaign similar to polio eradication needs to be launched”, Qazi asserted.
The Minister was speaking in a meeting on “Awareness campaign regarding protection of forests in J&K” here today. Representatives from concerned departments like Department of Forests, Social Forestry, Environment, Pollution Control Board, IWDP, Wildlife and various Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO’s) and people from media fraternity participated in the seminar.
Qazi Afzal said that Jammu and Kashmir’s rich wealth of forests started depleting from recent past which has to be made good off. He warned that if enough and potent measures are not taken in time to check the menace of deforestation an ecological catastrophe will befall.
He said that the need of the hour is to involve every kind of publicity channel to make awareness on the subject in rural areas besides information through posters and charts, staging of relevant skits and plays and utilizing NGOs for the purpose.
Qazi Afzal stressed upon the implementing agencies like IWDP to put various centrally and state sponsored schemes into action in a responsible manner. He said with continuous shrinkage of forestlands, the wild animals get subjected to loss of their natural habitat with the result they encroach human habitations and attack people. He said that publicity regarding protection of forests has a great role to play to make people participatory.
Minister of state for Forests, Mr. Aijaz Ahmad Khan on the occasion said that people’s participation is an essential pre-requisite for protection of forests. He asked the concerned agencies to maintain close coordination in order to garner whole-hearted support from every government and non-government agencies to help checking deforestation.
Later, various officers from different departments, journalists and NGOs participated in an interactive session regarding the subject.
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