With the noble aim of expanding the Forest cover and ensure a cleaner & greener Punjab for present and future generations, the Forest and Wildlife Preservation Department has envisaged the plantation of 6.50 Lakh saplings under all schemes in each of the 23 Districts of the State which comes around to 1.50 Crore saplings.
The significant project in the pipeline would align with the 650th Birth Anniversary of Sri Guru Ravidass Ji. Emphasizing the visibility of on ground results in this regard, the Forest and Wildlife Preservation Minister Mr. Lal Chand Kataruchak in a meeting today directed the Divisional Forest Officers (DFOs) to prepare an action plan in this regard in consultation with the Deputy Commissioners of their respective districts.
If need be, eminent personalities from all walks of life must be involved in order to turn the environmentalist Preservation and awareness into a mass movement, added the Minister. Advocating the identification of 2 sites in the big districts and one site in the smaller ones for the work pertaining to the plantation of saplings on both sides of state highways at 500 metre distance, the Minister exhorted the DFOs to do the needful and send the identified location by June 10th to the headquarters.
During the course of the meeting, Mr. Kataruchak was apprised that under the various initiatives such as the Green Punjab Mission, saplings would be planted on 584 Hectare land. As many as 650 Nanak Bagichis, dedicated to the birth Anniversary of Sri Guru Ravidsss Ji, would be set up also and the targeted areas would be the educational institutions, hospitals and industrial institutions.
As part of the Agro Forestry initiative, about 3 Lakh saplings are intended to be planted. The Minister on the occasion also greatly appreciated the Monitoring and Evaluation App developed by the department with a view to ensure the real time tracking of the plantation status.
Among others present included the Administrative Secretary Forests & Wildlife Preservation Kamal Kishore Yadav, Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (Head of Forest Force) Dharminder Sharma, CCF (Plains) Nidhi Srivastava, APCCF (Budget) Sourav Gupta, APCCF (Chief Wildlife Warden) Basanta Raj Kumar, APCCF (FCA) Pratima Srivastava and CCF (Hills) Mahavir Singh.