A Brief History of Forestry.

In 1839-40, the government of the Bombay Presidency stopped the cutting of Teak trees on government property. In 1834, M. Connolly, Collector of Malabar in the Madras Presidency, began to plant Teak on a large scale at Nilambur. In 1847, Dr. Gibson was appointed Conservator of Forests in Bombay; from 1848 to 1856, Lieutenant (now General, C. S. I.) James Michael conducted the government timber operations in the Anamalai Teak forests (Madras), and made the first recorded attempts to protect Indian forests from injury by annual jungle fires.

In 1856, Dr. Hugh Cleghorn was appointed Conservator of Forests in Madras. He checked the destructive practices of temporary cultivation in the government forests of that Presidency, a measure, which at first was strongly opposed by the people, but his well-known desire to promote native interests inspired the rulers of the country with confidence, and finally his measures were successful.

Various attempts at some kind of regulation of the exploitation by lumbermen were also made by the general government, after various examinations and reports, and, in 1847, even a small and ineffective forest department was organized.

The annexation of the Province of Pegu in lower Burma, in 1852, introduced a new complication, and proved the turning point in forestry matters. In this province, the right to cut Teak had been reserved by the native princes, and hence became a right of the crown, but private lumbermen began to cut this timber, and, after an investigation and report, it was decided to take definite steps to regulate the use of these valuable Teak forests at least.

Lord Dalhousie, the then Governor-General, upon the basis of the report of the superintendent of forests at Pegu, Dr. McClelland, in 1855 laid down in statesmanlike manner an outline of a permanent forest policy for the government, and introduced the first professional adviser.

In 1856, a German forester from Hesse, Dietrich Brandis (afterward Sir) was installed as superintendent of forests for Pegu with wide powers under contract for 10 years, at a liberal salary, and pension after retirement. The only possible check that could at first be applied was to force the lumbermen to make contracts, limit the diameter to which the exploitation was to be allowed, and mark the trees to be felled. This was done, naturally not without a large amount of friction.

The result of this experiment in forest conservancy, as the English are pleased to call it, was so satisfactory, that, in 1862, it was decided to organize a forest department for all India; Brandis was entrusted with the organization, and, in 1864, he was appointed head of the new department under the Secretary of Public Works with the title of Inspector-General, acting as adviser of the various provincial governments.

The forests of India during the next 20 years during which Brandis held office, were, province by province, brought under the regime of the Imperial Forest Department, although the provincial governments retain full and independent administrative power.

The first problem was to settle ownership conditions, which was done in the manner described before, by the act of 1865, and by later acts.

The discontent which was created by this act came very near wrecking the whole enterprise, and much difference of opinion between the local and general governments existed, the government of Madras going so far as to declare the impossibility of establishing State property in view of the acknowledged rights of the villagers over waste lands. The general policy, however, finally prevailed, and an increasingly harmonious cooperation of the provincial governments has allowed the development of an efficient forest service.

Various provincial legislation was considered, passed and repealed, until, in 1878, the Indian Forest Act VII settled the policy at least for the majority of the provinces, Madras and Burma and some minor districts still declining to extend its provisions to their forests. The Burma government enacted, however, similar legislation in 1881, and the Madras government in 1882, and, much later, the other outstanding governments followed (1886 to 1891), so that, while the detail of application varies not inconsiderably, the general policy regarding forest property of the State is the same throughout the empire. Whatever of uniformity exists had to be secured mainly by persuasive means.

The forest acts, as stated on a previous page, contain certain provisions regarding formation of village forests and control of private forest property, but no interference with private forest property has been attempted, although in some parts this is more important and larger than the State holdings. Most of the owners merely exploit their property, but some of the larger, more enlightened native princes have established forest administrations, imitating the example of the Imperial government. Those of Mysore and Kashmir and Hyderabad have placed this administration under an imperial forest officer, furloughed for this purpose, and derive handsome revenues; the Kashmir forests of about 2500 square miles yielding round $180,000; those of Mysore, near 2000 square miles, over $330,000, this largely derived from sales of sandal wood; those of the Nizam of Hyderabad, with 5200 square miles in reserves and 4400 in protected forests, deriving a revenue of $75,000, seven times what it was ten years before.

4. Forest Organization and Administration

The condition of affairs in the forest department can be briefly summarized as follows for the year 1909.

Total area under government control: 241,774 square miles, namely, Reserved, 94,561; Protected, 8,835; Unclassed, 138,378.

Officials (in 1905): Higher grades, 312; Lower grades, 1,663; Guards, 8,533. The controlling staff was in 1909 increased by 34; and numbers in all other grades increased.

Rounded off Expenditures, $4,500,000; Revenues, $8,225,000; Net Proceeds, $3,675,000 (45 % of gross). Variation in the value of the rupee makes comparison with earlier years uncertain.

In spite of the many difficulties, a poor market (no market at all for a large number of woods), wild, unsurveyed, and practically unknown woodlands, requiring unusual and costly methods of organization and protection, the forestry department has succeeded, without curtailing the timber output of India, in so regulating forest exploitation as to insure not only a permanence in the output, but also to improve the woodlands by favoring the valuable species. It has prepared for an increase of output for the future, and at the same time has yielded the Government a steadily growing revenue, which bids fair to rank before long among the important sources of income.

In 1865 the net revenue was only $360,000, it had about doubled by 1875, and more than trebled by 1885, and since then has more than quadrupled.

While in the period of 1870 to 1874 the expense of the administration was still 70 per cent. of the gross income, it has gradually been reduced to near 45 per cent., while the outturn in material has in the last five years increased by 35 % over the preceding quinquennium.

At first, the department and its operations as well as its finances were Imperial, the local governments having no control over its officers or over the revenue derived, but, in 1882, decentralization was effected, the local governments obtaining a direct interest in the revenues. As a result the financial interest overruled the conservative policy, and over-cutting was the consequence. In 1884, the general government recognized the need of a change. After some struggle, the Imperial department was placed at least in charge of preparing the working plans, and pressure for their execution if not direct enforcement can be brought through appeal to the general government by the Inspector-General, which, however, has never been necessary to use.

The organization of the forest service passed through various stages, and the arrangement in the different provinces is even now not quite uniform.

The forest service, then, is peculiarly organized as regards division of responsibilities and relationships between the imperial and the provincial governments, the autonomy of the latter being jealously guarded. It is divided into the Imperial and the Provincial Service, the former consisting of the higher grade officials entirely recruited from England, the latter, the executive service, being in administrative functions independent of the former.

An Inspector-General, directly under the Secretary of Revenue and Agriculture, (for some time under the Home Department) is the head of the service, and acts as professional adviser both of the Imperial and the Provincial Governments. But this head of the service is shorn of most of executive functions, all administrative matters being reserved to the provincial authorities.

The Inspector-General has charge only of the forest school administration, of forest surveys, and of the making of working plans, which later, after approval by the Provincial government, are in their execution inspected and critically supervised by him, but without power to enforce them, or to give direction directly to the Conservators in charge (at least in Madras and Burma). He also watches over and reports on the progress of all forestry matters in the empire.

Peculiarities and great variety are also found in other official relations and in the appointing power, the general and provincial governments exercising certain rights in this respect.

The Controlling Staff (57 officers in 1869, now about 300) under the Inspector-General, consists of Conservators, Deputy Conservators and Assistant Conservators. The Conservators, now some 20, so far as they are not directly acting as assistants in the Inspector-General’s office, are the heads of the provincial departments and conservatorships, and in that capacity directly subordinate to the local government, which in Madras and Bombay also has their appointment; each is in charge either of the entire forest business of the Province, or of a circle forming part of a Province and the administration unit in India. These are, therefore, the most influential and most responsible agents in introducing forestry practices. Conservatorships are divided into divisions, each in charge of a divisional forest officer, a member of either the Imperial or the Provincial Controlling Staff; but these have to acknowledge subordination to the Chief Civil officer, the Collector of the district in which they are located, in order to harmonize the financial and forestal interests.

About 80 per cent. of the Controlling Staff in the Imperial Service are appointed by the Secretary of State from graduates formerly from the forest school at Cooper’s Hill College, now Oxford, the remaining 20 per cent. from Englishmen in the provincial service, the members of which have passed through the Dehra Dun forest school and through the lower branches of the service. In addition to this Superior Staff, a Subordinate Staff of Extra Deputy Conservators and Extra Assistant Conservators forms the Provincial Service, which is mainly recruited from the natives.

The districts are divided into ranges, for which an Executive Service is organized, of rangers (over 400), who are now selected from graduates of the forest school in Dehra Dun. Deputy rangers and foresters, a lower grade (some 1700), and guards, having their separate beats (over 8500), form the Protective Service, mostly or all recruited from the better class of natives.

5. Forest Treatment

With the irregular distribution of forests, the peculiarities of Indian government affairs and population, and the wild and difficult forest conditions themselves, it is but natural that the work thus far has been chiefly one of organization, survey, and protection.

In the protection against unlawful felling or timber stealing and grazing, the Government of India has shown itself fully equal to the occasion by a liberal policy of supplying villagers in proximity of the forests with fuel, building material, pasture, etc., at reduced prices or gratis. Over $1,500,000 worth is thus disposed of annually, the incentive to timber stealing being thereby materially reduced. A reasonable and just permit system for grazing, where again the needs of the neighboring villagers are most carefully considered, not only brings the government a yearly revenue of over $800,000, but enables the people to pasture about 14,000,000 head of animals in the State forests without doing any material damage to tree growth. Thirty-one per cent. of the total forest area is open to grazing.

The work of preventing and fighting fires can with the means available not be carried on over the entire forest area, of which large tracts are not even crossed by a footpath, and in a land where the regular firing of the woods has become the custom of centuries, and where, in addition, intensely hot and dry weather, together with a most luxuriant growth of giant grasses, render these jungle fires practically unmanageable. Each year, however, additional territory is brought under protection. In 1902, nearly 37,000 square miles, or nearly 40 % of the area in reserve, but only 12 % of the total government forest area, were under protection at a cost of $4.00 per square mile or less than one cent per acre, half of what it was 10 years before, and over 2 per cent. of the gross revenue. Nearly 5,000 fires occurred, to be sure, which burnt over 3,000,000 acres, that is to say over 90 per cent. of the area the protection was effective. For nearly half the fires the cause remains unknown. Danger from fire has, however, become less in protected areas because of the changes in herbage and moisture conditions. Yet it costs still about two per cent. of the gross revenue to protect the area, and the figures just cited show that this expenditure is only partially effective. In 1909, the protected area had increased to 43,000 square miles, the cost to $5, the efficiency to 94 per cent.

The first successful attempts to deal with forest fires were made in 1864 by Major (later Colonel) G. F. Pearson, who was then Conservator of Forests in the Central Provinces, and who devised a system of cleared fire lines or “fire traces,” surrounding the areas to be protected, which were cut and burned over early in the season, a system now in vogue in all India. In the jungle forests the traces must be broad; the grass often taller than an elephant must be cut and burned before the grass on either side of the fire lane is dry enough to burn.

This protection forms the most important duty of the forest officials, a trying one as it has to be carried on during the hot season.

A separate branch of the forest service carried on the work of surveying and mapping the forest area instead of the regular Survey of India, with the result of cheapening the cost. Some 74,000 square miles had been mapped on the scale of 4 inch to the mile, the standard, some smaller areas on smaller scale, at the rate of $25 per square mile. In 1908, however, this work was handed over to the Survey.

Silviculture. Silvicultural practices are naturally but little developed. Protection against fire, grazing, overcutting has been the first requisite. The unregulated selection system with a diameter limit, which Brandis introduced, still prevails mostly, although beginnings of a compartment and group system in converting miscarried selection forest of Deodar, Pine and Sal have been made, or rather of an improved selection method, which seeks to secure reproduction in groups. Clearcutting with seed trees held over is practised in the coniferous mountain forest. Coppice and coppice with standards (reserves of sprouts) is a natural condition over large areas, especially with Teak and Sal. Even improvement cuttings or sowing on barren hillsides with remarkable success, are not absent.

The attempts at securing reproduction, especially in the truly tropic forests have often miscarried, inferior species filling the openings. Girdling of inferior species to favor the better classes has hardly had the desired result. In the deciduous forest, the same difficulty of undesirable aftergrowth is experienced, deteriorating the composition, except in the case of the gregarious Sal tree (Shorea robusta), the treatment of which for reproduction has, after many failures, been well established. Other gregarious species also can be satisfactorily reproduced. The culled and burned-over forests, of which, there are many, are re-habilitated in a manner by merely removing the old overmature and defective timber, with comparative success.

In some parts, the large gregarious bamboos are a serious obstacle to reproduction. Here, the only chance for reproduction exists when they flower and die. Killing the bamboos by cutting the annual shoots proved a failure, but burning over the whole area and sowing seems to be followed by success.

In other parts, as in the large Teak forests of Burma, as well as of other provinces, the useless kinds of trees are girdled, huge climbers are cut off, and a steady war is waged against all species detrimental to teak regeneration with satisfactory results. With Teak, even planting on a larger scale is resorted to, especially by means of taungyas, i.e. plantations, where the native is allowed to burn down a piece of woods, use it for a few years as field (though it is never really cleared) on condition of planting it with teak, being paid a certain sum for every hundred trees found in a thrifty condition at the time of giving up his land. Similarly, the department has expended large sums in attempting to establish forests in parts of the arid region of Beluchistan, and, on the whole, during 1894-95 about $150,000 were expended on cultural operations, which up to that time involved about 76,000 acres of regular plantations and 36,000 acres taungyas (mostly teak,) making a total of 112,000 acres, besides numerous large areas where the work consisted merely in aiding natural reproduction.

But, in 1909, the plantations seem to have been reduced to 59,000 acres, (probably through failures), the taungyas however increased to 84,000 acres, and the budget for plantings and other cultural measures formed a little over two per cent. of the gross revenues.

We see then, that though the forests of India are now, and will continue for some time to be little more than wild woods with some protection and a reasonable system of exploitation in place of a mere robbing or culling system, yet the work of actual improvement steadily increases in amount and perfection.

In disposing of its timber the Government of India employs various methods. In some of the forest districts the people pay merely a small tax and get out of the woods what and as much as they need. In other cases, the logger pays for what he removes, the amount he fells being neither limited in quantity nor quality. The prevalent systems, however, are the permit system, when a permit is issued indicating the amount to be cut and the price to be paid for the same, and the contract system, when the work is more or less under the control of government officers and the material remains government property until paid for. To a limited extent the governments carry on their own timber exploitation.

Working Plans. Only a relatively small part of the total forest area, each year, however, increasing, is as yet worked under plans. In 1885, only 109 square miles, in 1899, 20,000 square miles, and in 1903, nearly 30,000 square miles, about 13 per cent. of the total, or 30 per cent. of the reserved area, were operated under working plans, and each year about 4000 square miles are added, so that now (1909) over half the reserved area is under working plans.

Only gradually was the character of these plans brought into practical form, and their execution, in spirit at least, enforced, the Conservators having the right to deviate from the plans.

A map, prepared by the survey branch naturally forms the basis of the plan. The form of the plan is prescribed by the provincial regulations, and the preparation is also carried on by the provincial service under advice and supervision of the imperial department. The “strip valuation survey,” which Brandis introduced, covering sometimes as much as 30 per cent. of the area, is employed in determining number of trees and sizes, growing stock and cut, modeled after the European practice, except that little, perhaps too little, money is spent on their elaboration, especially on determining the proper amount of cut. That the cut is controlled at all is the most important result.

6. Education and Literature

In 1866, Sir Dietrich Brandis selected as assistants two young men who had been trained in the forest schools of Germany – in turn his successors – and at the same time arrangements were made for the training of young Englishmen in the Forest schools of France and Germany. At the end of 1875 the professional education was entirely transferred to Nancy. The present force of Conservators is composed largely of these men. For some reason, the training of men in Germany and France became unpopular, and this objection finally led, in 1884, to the establishment of a chair of forestry at Cooper’s Hill College for Engineering in England. At first, the course of study extended over 26 months, during 22 of which the candidates prosecuted their studies at the college; the remaining four months being spent under suitable supervision in selected British and Continental forests.

In 1905, this department was transferred to Oxford University and the course extended to three years, one year to be spent in continental forests. At present this time may, however, be reduced to two years and the vacations in continental forests. This is a government affair, and probationers receive stipends from the government.

Mr. Brandis as early as 1869 saw also the necessity of providing the means of giving the natives of India some sort of technical education in forestry. The first step in this direction was to place natives, selected ones, under one or two officers of the Imperial Service who were deemed fit to instruct them, and in this way a few good men were turned out. Another experiment, after the German pattern, was made by apprenticing likely young men under some forester for a year or two and then sending them to an engineering school for theoretical instruction. This was also a failure. After much hard work, the Indian forest school at Dehra Dun was established in 1878, the forests between the Jumna and the Ganges rivers were set aside as training grounds, formed into a special Forest Circle and placed under the control of the director of the school. These forests have been subjected to regular systems of management, based on European experience, and excellent results have been obtained. The first course of systematic theoretical instruction was opened on the 1st of July, 1881. In 1884 the school was made an imperial institution by the Government of India, and the Inspector-General of Forests was charged with its supervision, under a Board of Control, consisting of the Inspector-General, the Director, and three Conservators, with the Assistant Inspector-General as secretary. This board meets once a year at Dehra, conducts the examinations, and looks into all of the workings of the School very carefully. There were two courses – one in which the teaching was given in English for rangers, the other in which the instruction was given in the vernacular for foresters; courses extending over 24 months. In 1906 the school was raised to the rank of a college and the course in the vernacular abolished. The graduates may aspire to the rank of division officers. The training of lower grade officers is left to the provinces. The Bombay Presidency had for some time their own forest school in connection with the Engineering College at Poona, but this is now abandoned. Another school, however, is located at Tharrawaddy, with a two-year course in Burmese, and one in Madras with a one-year course; so that the education of lower grade officials is well attended to.

Forest Experiment and Investigations have never been systematically instituted, being left to individual initiative, but lately (1909) provision has been made in this direction in connection with the Dehra Dun school by the establishment of an Imperial Research Institute.

Besides a monthly journal, the Indian Forester which came into existence in 1875 through Schlich’s initiative, and the annual reports of the various conservators and of the Inspector-General, a small book literature has developed within the last ten or fifteen years.