Vizagapatam/Chapter 5
CHAPTER V.
FORESTS.
Forests—Government forests; beginnings of conseivancy—Character of the forests; in Sarvasiddhi—In Palkonda— And in Golgonda—Zamindari forests—The Jeyporo forests; existing reserves—Destruction in former days—Situation and characteristics.
Of the forests of the district, CHAP. V. Forests. Government owns only those in the three Government taluks of Golgonda, Palkonda and Sarvasiddhi; and these are limited in extent and value.
Far the best growth is that which lies in the Jeypore zamindari and is thus outside direct State control, but in this estate (and also in the Vizianagram zamindari) steps have been taken in recent years (see below) to ensure some degree of protection against the wholesale destruction which has proceeded too long unchecked.
The worst enemy of the forests of the district has always been the system of cultivation practised by the hill people and called kondapudu or podu. This consists in felling a piece of jungle, burning the felled trees and undergrowth, sowing dry grain broadcast in the ashes (without any kind of tilling) for two years in succession, and then abandoning the plot for another elsewhere.
Government forests; beginnings of conservancy. The Government forests may be first referred to.1[1] Those notified under section 16 of the Forest Act now consist of 213 square miles in Golgonda taluk, 62 in Palkonda and 23 in Sarvasiddhi. In addition, about 530 square miles in the Golgonda Agency (the most valuable of all the Vizagapatam Government forests) and about 100 square miles in the Palkonda Agency are protected by rules framed under section 26 of the Act.
As far back as 1865 Mr. Carmichael, the then Collector, drew the attention of the authorities to the value of the growth on the Golgonda hills, and suggested that it should be placed under the Conservator of Forests. He said that the reckless manner in which all the zamindari forests were being denuded made it the more imperative that Government should endeavour to conserve the few jungles which belonged to them. On this it was ordered that a dépôt should be established at Narasapatam at which timber should be stocked for sale and that seigniorage rates should be charged on timber and bamboos brought down from the hills. The dépôt was never opened, however, and the seigniorage fees drove merchants and ryots to supply themselves elsewhere. In 1865-66 the charges for the establishment which collected the seigniorage were Rs. 410 and the revenue only Rs. 27, and in the next year the loss on working the system rose to over Rs. 900.The Conservator, Captain (afterwards Colonel) Beddome, there-upon made a spirited attempt to get the Government to transfer this unprofitable undertaking from his budget to the Collector's. He was unsuccessful; and his interest in the matter seems to have rapidly cooled in consequence.
Desultory action followed for many years until at length the Forest Act of 1882 rendered it possible to put matters on a more satisfactory footing. Progress was then, however, unfortunately checked by differences of opinion between the Collector and the new Forest department, and by doubts as to whether the Act could be extended to the forests in the Golgonda and Pálkonda Agencies; and it was only in 1886 that any definite policy was enunciated. It was then ordered that on the hills in Golgonda taluk blocks should be selected in which unauthorized felling should be prohibited, and that in the rest of that Agency valuable timber should only be felled under license; that in Pálkonda Agency blocks should be selected and defined in which all cutting and pódu cultivation should be entirely forbidden; and that in Sarvasiddhi taluk areas not exceeding 5,000 acres in all should be selected for reservation. In the next six years, however,only one block was actually constituted a forest, and it was not until 1903 that reservation was complete. Conservation has thus had but a short trial in this district.
Of the existing forests, those in Sarvasiddhi consist merely of the scrub growing on certain of the low, red hills with which that taluk is dotted. The two largest blocks are the Vémagiri and Peddapalli reserves, which are respectively 1,611 acres and 9,077 acres in extent; and working-plans have been sanctioned for these.
The former block is described as 'exhibiting in the highest degree the effect of unrestricted felling, grazing and browsing for many years' and as containing a crop 'similar to that of all the east coast forests' but possessing 'a variety of species remarkable for so miserable a growth.' The working-plan provides for the closure of the reserve for thirty years and for the regulation of the grazing during that period. The Peddapalli reserve lies opposite Yellamanchili on the low, narrow range of red hills which run from the southern extremity of the district to near Kasimkóta. The growth in this is not quite so wretched as in Vémagiri. There is no real timber,but the slopes of the hill are covered with coppice varying in density according to the aspect, the incidence of grazing and the extent to which the forest was formerly denuded by pódu cultivation. Old inhabitants remember seeing pódu all over this range in former days. The crop is thinnest on the outer slopes next the cultivation, and densest in the interior valleys.
The working-plan divides the reserve into two circles, east and west. In the former of these about half the area is to be closed to felling for 20 years, while the other half is to be treated on the system known as 'coppice with standards' to meet the local demand for small timber, sugar-cane props and fuel. The latter circle (excepting 550 acres) has been divided into eight annual coupes which are to be felled, on the same system, for the supply of fuel to the railway companies at Waltair and the markets along the coast, when the exploitable age of the growth reaches 20 years. This necessitates the closure of the circle to felling for twelve years in each rotation. The working-plan also provides for the regulation of grazing and protection from fire.
In Pálkonda the receipts from the forests, which lie chiefly on the Pálkonda hills, were included, up to 1886, in the lease of the taluk to Messrs. Arbuthnot & Co., and the Forest Act was only extended to the country in 1890. The inner valleys of the hills contain a good deal of sál (Shorea robusta) in patches, small but capable of improvement, and the outer slopes carry a scrub jungle full of seedlings of iron wood (Xylia dolabriformis),satinwood (Chloroxylon Sicietenia) and other good trees. But the whole area is so liable to fires and has been so ruined by long-continued pódu cultivation that there is little growth left, while reservation is restricted by the necessity of leaving the hill people a sufficient area on which to practise this pódu. The largest reserves are Barnakonda (13,517 acres), Kadagandi (11,064), Antikonda ('6,969) and Pálkonda (4,580). Of these, perhaps the least promising is the last, all of it having been felled at one time or another for pódu, and the northern slope being especially bad. Kadagandi, which includes a considerable belt on the plains, is probably the best of the reserves and is likely to increase in value.
For the areas in the Pálkonda Agency outside the tracts reserved under section 16 of the Forest Act, simple rules have been framed under section 26 which, among other things, prohibit the felling or damaging of trees or the gathering of their produce without the Collector's permission; permit the special protection of special tracts from fire or grazing; empower the Collector to prohibit the felling of specified trees; and allow hill-villagers to fell free of charge any wood which they require for home consumption and to carry on pódu under certain restrictions.
In Golgonda taluk the forests are also of two classes, those in the plains reserved under section 16 and those on the hills protected by rules framed under section 26 and similar to those in force in the Pálkonda Agency. The growth in the former resembles that in Sarvasiddhi taluk already referred to, the situation, soil, and circumstances of the two areas being very similar. Parts of two reserves near Narasapatam are being treated under a systematic working-plan to provide fuel for that town, while four small reserves which lie at the southern end of the taluk are being exploited for railway and other fuel as a complementary 'series' to the West Peddapalli working circle.
The forests on the Golgonda hills are some of the densest and most continuous in the whole district. On the edge of the plateau next the plains the villages are larger than elsewhere and pódu is frequent, but this seldom extends down the outer slopes and the further one travels inland the rarer does it become, until in the western part of the hills only isolated areas occur in the otherwise unbroken sea of jungle. The heaviest growth is in the valleys,and the tops of the numerous hills with which the plateau is dotted are usually bare except for a covering of long grass. The hill people require but little timber for their own domestic use, and as the plateau is inaccessible to carts no illicit removals to the plains are possible. The forests are in consequence as well protected as any in the Presidency, although they are not reserved under section 16 of the Act and no forest staff is stationed in them. The only real injury from which they suffer is that caused by fires.
Captain Beddome's report on this tract (and his description still applies) says -
'For the eastern coast the hills are very rich in forest vegetation,and I was surprised to find very considerable tracts of shola or moist forest land about most of the ravines and in the vicinity of the hill-streams. These tracts are not so rich in the number of species of trees, or in the endless variety of undergrowth, as similar tracts on our western coast, but the forest is evergreen and decidedly what would bo termed shola, and is very rich in ferns; some fifty species having been observed, amongst which were three or four unknown to our western forests, though all of them Himalayan or Burmene ferus, and two very fine tree-ferns. The rattan abounds, moss was very abundant and at a much lower elevation than it is found in our western forests, and lycopods were common. The drier forests yield three sorts of bamboo and are very rich in valuable timber .... About fourteen miles to the south-west of Gúdem, and two miles from a small village called Marripákalu, I found a small tract of teak of superb growth. The area was perhaps not 200 acres, but has evidently been much curtailed by hill-cultivation and has occupied a larger area at some previous date. There were a good many trees seven to nine feet in girth and sixty or seventy feet high, with a perfectly straight trunk, and saplings were numerous. The tree was hardly observed at all elsewhere on the mountains; and it is curious that its area should be restricted.'
Among the most characteristic trees of these hills are the gallnut (Terminalia Chebula), the nalla maddi (T. tomentosa) , Cedrela microcarpa, a species of the valuable 'false cedar' which occurs in numbers near Gúdem, stunted Buchanania latifoiia, which is found on grassy flats, Pterocarpus Marsupium, Anogeissus latifoiia and Aacuminata on the banks of streams, while on the outer slopes are wide areas covered with bamboo.
The two largest reserves are Dárakonda, called after the prominent hill of that name, and Senivaram. They adjoin one another and clothe a conspicuous line of hills near the western boundary of the taluk, and together they are 122 square. miles in extent. A novel working-plan, designed to secure the protection of the reserves from their worst enemy, was sanctioned for this area at the end of 1903. The two reserves used to suffer terribly every year from the fires which swept through them — generally started by careless travellers in the patches of long grass which clothe the tops of the hills and occupy the sites of deserted villages — and the plan proposes to protect them by enlisting the co-operation of the local people. To villages within the limits of which no fires occur in any year either money rewards or certain valued privileges (such as free grazing for a certain number of cattle, the right to collect minor forest produce, and permission to draw sago toddy) are granted by the District Forest Officer in person at his annual inspection; while where fires occur the privileges are withdrawn and the rewards withheld. Until 1905 the plan worked well, the villagers realizing that the Government were really anxious to stop the fires and appreciating the advantages to be gained by assisting the endeavour.
In the forests in the Jeypore and Vizianagram zamindaris, conservation has lately been rendered possible by the introduction, with the consent of the respective owners of those properties, of rules under the Forest Act. The Vizianagram forests consist, with the exception of a small area round about Anantagiri, of scrub jungles on the low hills in the plains, similar to those of Sarvasiddhi above referred to, and are not of great interest.
The forests of Jeypore, on the other hand, are the finest and most extensive in all the district. Reservation in these began in earnest in 1000, and up to date 61 blocks, aggregating 324 square miles or 2½ per cent, of the total area of the estate, have been reserved; while proposals for reserving an additional 125 square miles are now before the Agent (whose sanction to proposed reservations is necessary under the rules);1[2] and another 597 square miles is undergoing the preliminary processes of selection, demarcation or survey under the care of the estate's Forest officer Mr Eber Hardie.2[3] The biggest of the reserved blocks is Dharangád, on the Rámagiri side of Jeypore taluk, which is 60,000 acres in extent, while two others in Malkanagiri taluk measure respectively 28,800 acres and 17,500 acres. Adjoining Dharangád are other blocks now under survey, and when these have been reserved there will be an unbroken stretch of 100,000,acres of sál forest in that corner of the estate.
This action has not been taken a moment too soon, for the forests of the estate have already been grievously injured by unrestricted lopping, girdling, ringing, felling and burning.
As far back as 1872, Mr. H. G. Turner reported that the exclusive right to the timber of Malkanagiri had been leased by the then manager of the taluk, Bangára Dévi, for an inadequate sum to a man who had proceeded to 'cut down every stick of wood it would pay him to export. The forests in the neighbourhood of the Saveri are ruined.' Shortly afterwards he suggested that Government should lease the forests of the estate to preserve them from further denudation. He pointed out that the Indrávati and Saveri (which are the only two tributaries of the Gódávari which carry any considerable hot-weather supply and which are thus the mainstay of the second-crop cultivation in the Gódávari delta) were entirely dependent for their water upon the forests of Jeypore; and he declared that these latter were rapidly being wiped out of existence. He said —
'I can myself call to mind a score of hills that have been completely cleared of forest within five years. I have hunted bison in the rough jungles that have now no vestige of existence. Old men point to country where there is now not a copse large enough to hide a sambhur for hundreds of square miles, and tell me that, in their youth, that land was covered with jungle. When civilization pushes back the wilder members of the hill-tribes into the yet unconquered jungle, they commence upon it by felling- and burning virgin forest on the side of the hills. One would naturally imagine that they would attack the fertile valleys in the first instance. But these pioneers of civilization are generally without ploughs and they cannot keep down the grass with their hoes. The hill-felling will continue until every acre within the village bounds has been exhaubted, and it is not till then that the ryot will begin to manure his low-lying lands. Nor will the hill-side be ever suffered to regain its lost function of supplying water for the country round about it; for, when its wood is nearly large enough to become of use in this way, some poor or lazy ryot will be attracted by the prospect of an easily raised crop, and will destroy the young jungle again. It is not easy to assess the enormous loss that the ryot entails on himself by those operations, for he grows his rice in terraces hollowed out of the water-courses that spring from the bottom of the slopes of these hills. Within my own circle of observation, I can point to one or two villages where some five years ago two crops were raised, but where there is now no water for the second.'
As a result of this letter Col. Beddome, the Conservator of Forests, was despatched to report upon the country. The verdict of this well-known authority was to the same effect. He said —
'This plateau (the 3,000 feet plateau) is wonderfully well watered by numerous streams, which all have their rise in the woods which were or less clothe all the small rising hills. These latter were all, at a very recent date, covered with fine forest, but this is fast disappearing owing to the ruinous system of hill cultivation. Numerous hills have already been turned into bare rocky waste, or are only clothed with a few date bushes or the poorest description of stunted growth; and if the present system of cultivation is allowed to go on unrestricted, the entire disappearance of all woodlands is only a question of time. Over the whole portion of the plateau visited I did not find a single patch of virgin forest, except here and there very small plots (scarcely over half an acre) where reservation had occurred on account of some sacred stone. Every acre has, at some time or other, been felled and burnt for hill cultivation, and is at the best only second growth; but most tracts have seen probably many rotations of this system, and, consequently, the forests are to be seen at every stage of deterioration. About the centre of the plateau the oldest growth anywhere observed by me was about forty or fifty years', and in almost all oases where I found forest above thirty years of age I was informed that it was marked for early destruction.
The woods are neither wholly evergreen nor wholly deciduous, but a mixture of both and similar to what is met with in some parts of Coorg and Wynaad. They do not suffer at once in the same way as the heayy evergreen forests of the western side of the Presidency; the same growth more or less appears; not a thorny wilderness of quite different plants. The burning is (at first, at least) very superficial, and the stumps, or a greater portion of them, at once begin to grow again; and when the cultivation is abandoned, which it generally is after two years, the forest soon begins to recover itself. The evergreen trees suffer more than the others, and these are more or less absent at first, and for some years rank grass and much thorn and coarse undergrowth hold sway and fires periodically sweep through, and it is not till the growth arrives at an age of some twenty years or more that there is any chance of much humus being added to the surface soil, and then fires are soon excluded, seedlings have a chance, and shortly afterwards rattans and tree ferns appear. The evergreen trees increase in number, and the undergrowth quite changes its character, and species of acanthaceous shrubs (Strohilanthes) appear as in our moist western sholas.
This is a sketch of what occurs after the first felling of a virgin forest, or when the forest has been allowed forty or fifty years to recover. A virgin forest at this elevation is a fine sight; it is moist and shady, and tolprably open for walking through or for sport, Rattans and tree ferns, orchids, and moss abound. The trees are large,and there is much valuable timber. When a tract is allowed forty or fifty years to recover, it appears to return almost to its pristine vigour and form, and many seedling trees in time make way; and unless the base of the older trees be observed, a forester even might be deceived, and fancy that he was in a virgic. forest, it is, however, only in a few tracts, chiefty on the eastern and western ghauts of the plateau where the hills form chaos, that the forests are allowed a rest of any long duration. About the more accessible and less densely-forested portions they are felled over every eight, ten, or fifteen years, and never have a chance of recoverijig. They have a wretched, stunted Appearance, are very dry and more or less impenetrable from a tangled rank under-growth, and there are no seedlings; nothing, in fact, but the coppice growth, generally of only the quicker-growing but poorer sorts of timber. By the uninitiated these tracts are generally looked upon as having been ab initio of the same poor, stunted growth, but it is only the result of rotations of felling and burning and consequent poverty of the soil.
The south-west monsoon is very heavy on these hills, and when a tract of forest on the slopes of the hills, which rise all over the plateau, i« felled and under cultivation, and before the forest again begins to grow, the denudation of soil is very groat. The traces of this are everywhere apparent, and I had ocular demonstration of it on several occasions, as there was some very heavy rain whilst I was up. Besides this denudation, when these tracts arc felled over at such short periods there is no virtue added to the soil by the decaying vegetation, and tree-growth cannot flourish: each rotation it is poorer and poorer till at last it disappears altogether.
I have nowhere in India seen this hill cultivation so systematically carried out. Directly all the forest within a certain radius has been felled and cultivated, the village is deserted and the cultivators move off to other tracts to carry on the same ruinous system. Numerous deserted villages may he seen all over the plateau; the site is almost always marked by a good many grand old tamarind, mango and champa trees, generally of about a hundred years' growth, and in most cases by a few tumbled down huts; these sites are probably always returned to periodically.
This description of pódu cultivation and its effects is strictly applicable to the state of things which still prevails to-day. Wherever one travels through Jeypore, one sees wide tracts of hill-side, which once were forest-clothed, now covered only with blackened stumps, leafless dead trees, bare ash-covered soil and protruding barren rock. Mr. Willock wrote in 1890 that 'the destruction going on in the sál country beyond Naurangpur at present is most lamentable. Wherever one goes one sees huge areas, hundreds of acres in extent, covered with the remains of fine forests, ringed a year or two back to afford a site for two or three seasons' mixed cultivation of ragi, millet, niger and weeds, but chiefly the latter.'
The jungles have also suffered to a less extent from other wasteful habits of the hill man. He will lop a Schleichera trijuga tree out of all shape to collect the lac off its branches; hack the boughs off a Terminalia Chebula to save himself trouble in gathering its fruit; ring or fell a full-grown sal tree for the sake of the few pies' worth of dammar which results; and cut down a 50-feet teak tree to get a little honey from its upper branches.
The result of years of these reckless methods is that to-day the 3,000 feet plateau contains no considerable area of heavy jungle anywhere north of the line of the Machéru river. Rapidly dwindling patches survive, but their expectation of life is short. The jungle on Damuku, the big hill behind the Pottangi travellers' bungalow, for instance, still holds sambhur, but it is highly probable that in twenty years it will have disappeared. Round Koraput and Nandapuram the country is already so bare that even firewood is scarce, and it is difficult to believe that the hills ever carried any jungle at all.
The level country in the neighbourhood of Jeypore town and the hills between Náráyanapatnam and Bissamkatak contain sparse forest, ruined by constant pódu cultivation, but no large timber is left in them except the mohwa, tamarind and jack trees which the hill people have spared for the sake of their fruit.
The only good growth remaining is that in the extreme north of the Bissamkatak and Gunupur taluks; in the country north of the Indrávati; in the west of Jeypore taluk round about Rámagiri; on the line of hills which separates this from the lower levels of Malkanagiri; and between Kondakambéru in this last taluk and the boundary of Hill Mádgole.
In the north of the Bissamkatak and Gunupur taluks grows the finest sál in the district. Except trees which were too big to transport, all which was near enough to the Vamsadhára river to be dragged thither by buffaloes, has long since been felled by the Reddi timber-contractors of Gunupur, and floated down on bamboo rafts to Kalingapatam in Ganjám district. A royalty on each raft used to be collected by the Gudári ámín. Difficulties of transport have, however, saved the more inaccessible sál. At Majjikóta, where the three main tributaries of the Vamsadhára meet, there is a waterfall, and the streams above this are full of rocky barriers. Consequently no floating is possible north of this point. Moreover the country to the east of the river, between it and Chandrapur and Bijápur, is too rough for timber-dragging. Further north, the sál in the Jagdalpur and Dongasúrada muttas has also escaped owing to its inaccessibility, and still includes trees as much as ten feet in girth.
The country to the north of the Indrávati, especially along the valley of the Tél, is one great forest with scattered cultivation in isolated glades. Here again there is much fine sál, and the difficulty of getting it out has preserved it from destruction. The tree makes a beautiful forest, for if it has a chance it eventually ousts other varieties and forms a jungle clear of undergrowth and consisting of tall, straight trunks topped with a heavy canopy of leaves. Round Umarkót grows the Schleichera trijaga on which the lac insect deposits its valuable secretions and here also, especially towards the Kálahandi side and near the frontier north-east of Raigarh, is some scattered teak of fair dimensions.
In the Rámagiri forests the sál again appears in strength, and at Mattupáda, near Rámagiri, are some saw-mills which were put up while the Jeypore estate was under management during the present Mahárája's minority.
On the range of hills which divides the Jeypore taluk from the lower Malkanagiri country is more fine sál; but just below them, along a line drawn from Pangam to Salimi, is the southern limit of the tree, and the most valuable timber in Malkanagiri itself is teak. The best places for this are some small tracts round Sikkapalli and Akkurn, and the banks of the Saveri, Potéru and siléru rivers. But the Malkanagiri forests as a whole are disappointing, containing little (except to the east of Kondakambéru) but open sapling growth interspersed with wide swamps covered with high and almost impassable grass.
On the whole, therefore, the Jeypore forests, quite apart from their value to the streams which rise in the country, still form, in spite of the treatment they have undergone, a fine property which, if given a chance, will continually increase in value and is consequently well worth conserving in every way possible.
- ↑ 1 In the account of these which follows I have received material assistance from Mr. W. Aitohieon, District Forest Officer,
- ↑ 1 The correspondence regarding the terms of the rules will be found in G,0., No. 433, Revenue, dated 9th July 1895, and the connected papers.
- ↑ 2 Mr. Hardie has kindly checked and corrected the account of those forest which follows.