Rajouri, November 16: Divisional Forest Officer Nowshera Neelima Shah today discussed environment conservation issues with Biodiversity Management Committee Lower Kangri.
The meeting was attended by Roshan Lal Sarpanch , Lower Kangri; Anil Kumar Sarpanch Middle Kangri; Ashok Kumar ,Sarpanch Changi Kangrial and Pritam Singh, Numberdar besides members of BMC and a number of locals. Range Forest Officer Sunderbani, Rakesh Verma welcomed all the participants and gave a brief overview of the Biodiversity Management Committee, its functions and responsibilities. He informed that the main function of BMC is to prepare a record of all the biological resources of BMC in a pre- designed register which is known as People’s Biodiversity Register(PBR). He also informed that PBRs have already been prepared for all the local bodies, and now the department is on the job of updating the information registered in the PBRs.
A set of PBR contains 31 formats and each format contains specific information about the biodiversity. Once the PBR is updated, it will aid in tracing how habitats are changing and to understand and estimate parts of our forests.
The Divisional Forest Officer Nowshera informed that PBR is an important document containing the information about the biodiversity of a BMC. It should be carefully updated with the documentation of all the information regarding flora and fauna. She also threw light on the importance and role of the BMC in forest management as well as local resource management. She said that a detailed map of Gram Panchayat with bird eye view photo of Gram Panchayat should also be added in PBR. Apart from BMC and PBR, she also discussed the Forest Rights Act and its implementation in detail with the participants of the meeting.
Sarpanch Lower Kangri, Roshan Lal presented vote of thanks and welcomed Forest Department’s decision to organise BMC meeting in far flung Panchayat of Sunderbani. He also assured DFO that Gram Panchayat is always ready to help the Forest department in all matters.
