After continuously depleting between 1987 and 1998, the country's green cover now looks to be static for the first time. This is a significant achievement as the forest cover is continuously decreasing from 6.38 million hectares (19.49%) in 1987 to 6.37 million hectares (19.39%) in 1998, according to the latest data released on Tuesday by ministry of environment and forest. According to the 10th State of Forest Report, the country has forest cover of 67.71 million hectares, which is 20.60 % of the total geographical area of the country. The report said although there has been a marginal loss of 728 km of forest cover during 2002-2004, which is attributed to destruction caused by Tsunami in Andaman & Nicobar Islands in December 2004. According to the Indian Remote Sensing Satellite data, collected during October 2004-January 2005 and analysed by Forest Survey of India, of these 5.46 million hectares (1.66%) are very dense forest, 33.26 million hectares (10.12%) is moderately dense and the rest 28.99 million hectares (8.82%) are open. "Various measure taken by the government to conserve and expand the forest resources is showing results,' S Regupathy, minister of state for environment & forest said. According to the report, Madhya Pradesh has the largest areas of more than 7.6 million hectares (11.22%) under the forest cover.