KUMUD JENAMANI
Jamshedpur, Sept 28: Saranda forest, the largest forest division in the country is running sans a ranger, causing the department to incur heavy losses in terms of tree-felling, increasing incidents of trampling deaths and mismanagement in forest projects.
Significantly, the scenario of an absence of rangers is not only confined to the Saranda forest division but it is prevalent in all the other divisions in Kolhan comprised of twin districts of Singhbhum and Seraikela-Kharsawan district and beyond.
A ranger in the forest department works like a coordinator between the divisional forest officer (DFO) and forest guards in getting all the activities executed for the protection of the green cover and its development. But due to inadequate postings of the rangers in various divisions, of late the normal activities of the forest department has affected to a great degree.
For example, the Saranda forest division which is spread over an area of 850 square km has four sanctioned posts of rangers, but presently no ranger is posted there.
In West Singhbhum, there are four forest divisions – Chaibasa, Porahat, Kolhan and Saranda – having a total of 19 sanctioned posts of rangers, but there are only four rangers posted in these divisions which are considered the thickest green cover in the state.
According to a senior forest department officer, the state has presently only 80 rangers against a sanctioned strength of 400.
“As a result of only one-fifth number of rangers posted in the state, several divisions like Saranda have either no danger posted there or rangers are compelled to take additional charge in two or more places. Such a situation leaves enough scope for the criminal elements to indulge in tree felling and the migratory elephants to go on the rampage in the human habitat killing people and destroying crops as well as houses with the department doing little to stop this all,” explained the officer while talking to lagatar24.com.
The forest officer who wanted not to be quoted said that ranger is a pivotal post in the forest department and despite it being so important a post no recruitment drive for the rangers has been done for almost the last three decades.
“After a gap of long period, the recruitment of forest guards was carried out in the year 2017, but 50 per cent of the forest guard posts are still vacant. And in the case of rangers, the last recruitment was done in the year 1992, causing a four-fifth number of vacancies lying vacant in the state, ” the officer pointed out.
Another officer who retired having served as a principal chief conservator of the forest a few years ago said that he had also felt the heat of extreme shortcomings of rangers during his tenure.
“The main fallout of absence of an adequate number of rangers was rampant tree felling and unfortunately the state government did not take any step to fill up the vacant posts of rangers despite repeated recommendations by me, ” he observed while talking to this correspondent.
