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Going up?

Going up? " the decline in the forest area has been halted to a great extent and many states have shown sizeable increase in the forest cover, despite mounting pressures of human and livestock population,' said Union environment minister T R Baalu, while releasing the report The State of Forest Report , 1999 , ( sfr ) recently in New Delhi. This is the seventh assessment of the forest cover in India.

According to sfr , the forest cover of the country is 63.73 million ha constituting 19.39 per cent of the geographic area of the country. Out of this 37.74 million ha (11.48 per cent) is dense forest, 25.5 million ha (7.76 per cent) is open forest and 0.49 million ha (0.15 per cent) are mangroves. Madhya Pradesh accounts for the largest forest cover of the country

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