Team Herald
PANJIM: A total of 98.49 hectares of forest land in Goa were diverted for non-forest purposes in 2020, the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC) said in its annual report 2020-21 released on Wednesday.
The report states that five projects were granted permission by the Ministry under the Forest Conservation Act, 1980, last year, to divert 98.49 ha of forest land for non-forest purpose.
The Ministry had granted in-principle approval to four projects to divert 29.08 ha of forest land, while a final approval was given to one project for diversion of 69.41ha of land.
The project which was granted final approval was for the construction of the 400 Kv Xeldem-Mapusa transmission line in favour of Goa Tamnar Transmission Project Ltd. The permission was granted on November 19, 2020. The other diversions were granted for State government projects.
This year – 2021-22 – the Ministry has already granted clearance for the diversion of 140 hectares of forest land for the South Western Railway’s double-tracking project.
As reported earlier, On February 4, MoEF&CC granted an in-principle approval or stage-1 clearance for diversion of 120.87 hectares of forest land for double-tracking between Castlerock to Kulem. Two other clearances were issued for the diversion of 1.90 hectares of private forest and 15.6 hectares of forest land for double-tracking between Kulem and Margao.
As per the State Forest report 2019 (released once in two years), the forest cover in the State stood at 2,237.49 sq km which is 60.44 per cent of the State’s geographical area.
