Divided States TG, AP Unite in Increasing Forest Cover

Hyderabad: Telangana and Andhra Pradesh have fared better as individual states in terms of the growth in forest cover, compared with how they performed as part of the undivided state.

According to the Reserve Bank of India’s latest ‘Handbook of Indian States’ released on Monday, the forest cover in Telangana rose from 19,854 square kilometres in 2015, to 21,214 sq km in 2021, the last year for which data was made available in the report.

During this same period, forest cover in residuary Andhra Pradesh rose from 26,006 sq km in 2015 to 29,784 sq km in 2021.

The last year for the undivided state for which forest cover data was available is 2013. The RBI said that the combined state had a forest cover of 46,116 sq km, down from 49,573 sq km in 1987.

By 2021, between the two states, the forest cover has risen to a combined 50,998 sq km, the report said, indicating that they managed to register a growth of 4,882 sq km.

Forest cover, the report said, includes all land which has a tree canopy density of more than ten per cent when projected vertically on the horizontal ground, within a minimum aerial extent of one hectare.

The report said tree cover — defined as tree patches outside recorded forest areas exclusive of forest cover and less than the minimum mappable area of one hectare — in Telangana rose from 2,549 sq km in 2015 to 2,848 in 2021, while for AP, these figures were put at 3,965 sq km in 2015 and 4,679 sq km in 2021.