By Our Staff Reporter
Dehradun, 21 Mar: The UN General Assembly in 2012 proclaimed 21st March as the International Day of Forests. The day celebrates and raises awareness on the importance of all type of forests. The International Day of Forests-2023 was celebrated at the Forest Research Institute, here, today. A guest lecture on “Historical Land Uses and Biodiversity” was delivered by Professor Emeritus Stephen Siebert, University of Montana, USA, on the occasion.
At the outset of the programme, Richa Misra, Head, Extension Division, FRI welcomed all the participants of the programme, which included Director, FRI, Dr Renu Singh, Director, IGNFA, Bharat Jyoti, Rajiv Bhartari, Chairman, Uttarakhand Biodiversity Board, Professor Emeritus Stephen Siebert, and his wife Jill Belsky a sociologist from the University of Montana, SK Awasthi, Additional Director, IGNFA, Anurag Bhardwaj, Director, Directorate of Education, senior officials from IGNFA, scientists from ICFRE-FRI, IFS probationers, Officer Trainees from CASFOS, PhD scholars, masters students from FRI deemed to be University and prize winning students from the Kendriya Vidyalaya.
Dr Renu Singh delivered the opening remarks. She spoke on the theme of IDF 2023, Forests and Health. She stated that forests provide goods, services and employment and income to about 2.5 billion people worldwide and how people benefit indirectly from the multiple environmental services that forests provide, such as carbon sequestration, temperature control and air purification. She spoke that forests provide food and livelihood and income earning opportunities that contribute to food security and nutrition. She highlighted the role of forests as a source of a wide variety of medicinal products that form the backbone of traditional medicine. She also spoke about the Urban and peri-urban forests and the role of trees to help mitigate many of the drawbacks of living in urban areas like buffering noise; reducing the urban heat island effect, providing green space for exercise, recreation and recovery from stress and how conserving and sustainably using forests is one of the best ways of protecting the planet.
This was followed by a guest lecture on “Historical Land Uses and Biodiversity” by Professor Emeritus Siebert, who spoke at length on the role of humans through the generations in helping in maintaining and to an extent enhancing biodiversity through examples from the Mayan civilisation, the Mediterranean and the aborigines in Australia. He also spoke about the role of fire in forest management especially in reducing fuel load thereby reducing the risk of forest fires. The session was well received and a number of questions were posed to the speaker.
Rajiv Bhartari, Chairman, Uttarakhand Biodiversity Board, also spoke on the role of people in maintaining natural landscapes.
In the last part of the programme, prize distribution for KV students who won the painting and slogan writing competitions held at FRI on the topics “Forests and Health” and “Importance of Forests in Human Life” was carried out.
The programme was anchored by Vijaya Ratre, Assistant Silviculturist, FRI. Dr Charan Singh, Dr Devendra Kumar, Rambir Singh, Vijay Kumar, PP Singh, Naveen Chauhan, Afshan Zaidi, Garima and other officials contributed to the success of the event.
