gurugram the latest forest survey report has shown that gurugram has lost nearly 25sqkm of forest cover the highest in the state the report by the forest survey of india which was released on thursday also said that haryanas forest cover on the other hand increased by 1sqkm the survey was conducted between october 2019 and february 2020 for the assessment year 2021according to the report while the states forest cover increased by 006 only that across the country saw a rise of 022 while haryanas forest cover was 1602sqkm in october 2019 it increased to 1602sqkm in february next yearbut gurugram is not the only district that saw a loss in forest cover there were nine other districts faridabad bhiwani hisar jhajjar karnal mewat palwal rohtak and yamunanagar while gurugram lost 247sqkm of forest cover during the fourmonth study period bhiwani saw a loss of 239sqkm nuh 055sqkm rohtak 074sqkm faridabad 071sqkm karnal 060sqkm and so on gurugrams total forest area now stands at 11371sqkmofficials said the decrease in forest cover was because much of the land had been diverted for nonforest purposes while sanctioning development projects particularly widening of roads development projects mostly roads have taken away large chunks of forest land in gurugram in the coming years more areas will be converted into nonforest categories because of several road widening projects said an officialmeanwhile principal conservator of forests vs tanwar pointed out two major reasons first there have been several highway projects that are cutting through the forest areas another reason is agroforestry activities which are not being conducted because of the covid situation we would bring eucalyptus saplings from andhra pradesh to increase our tree cover but we havent been able to do that of latethe tree cover however reduced by 140sqkm across the state tree cover is different from forests it is defined as tree patches that are less than 1 hectare in size and are outside the areas marked as forests haryanas tree cover reduced from 1565sqkm to 1425sqkmharyanas forest policy which was framed in 2006 had fixed a target of achieving 20 forest and tree cover in the state by 2020 but the latest report has definitely raised questions on what was achieved on the groundwe are losing both tree and forest cover every year the data clearly depicts the lack of intention on the part of the government to protect whatever remains of forest in the region said environmentalist vaishali rana chandrathe green activists expressed some hope at the marginal rise in haryanas forest cover but also flagged a cause for concern about the increasing infrastructure projects the trees that are outside of the forest conservation areas do not have any protection so they fall easy prey to urbanisation the governments action keeps hampering the forest areas of the state said vivek kamboj an environmentalistthe experts pointed out that recent amendments to the plp act 1900 would remove at least 240sqkm of the aravali land in south haryana from the states