If green is your thing, a career in forest management could see you go places, says Prithvijit Mitra

If you find the wild irresistible and long to be in the lap of nature rather than just sit in an office and work, forest management could be the answer to your prayers. As the need for managing India?s dwindling forest cover rises by the day, forest management courses are catching on. To join the gang, you need a spirit of adventure and a manager?s brain.

Forest management is all about conservation and maintenance of the forest wealth. The work implies application of technical forestry principles, practices and business techniques and hence, forest management can be defined as the practical application of scientific, economic and social principles to forests. Being the source of many direct and indirect benefits, they must be managed in such a way that the resource is not depleted.

A contentious question related to the management of forests is whom these benefits should go to. Should forests be managed to maximise the production of good quality timber to feed the construction and furniture industries or should they be managed to maximise production of firewood and fodder to serve the need of the rural poor? The other view is that the sole aim of forest management should be to conserve them as the natural habitat of wildlife.

Every state has its own forest management cell. The forest policy provides conceptual guidelines for forestry work. To translate the policy into action, detailed planning of field-level tasks is required.

So what does forest management teach you? In a word, everything that you need to know to manage and administer forests. That includes analytical and managerial skills, application of concepts to managerial problems, synthesis and perspective building, behavioural skills, technical skills, field work, basic accounting, management accounting, financial management and marketing and project management. At least, this is what the course at the Indian Institute of Forest Management (IIFM), Bhopal, will include.

Says D.K. Bandopadhyay, director, IIFM, ?Forest management means the accomplishment of multiple goals such as sustainable forest management, livelihood issues in rural India, community forestry, gender issues in forestry, legal and policy analysis in forestry, protected area and biodiversity conservation, management of ecosystem and watersheds, soil and water conservation, maintaining biodiversity and hydrological cycles and carbon sequestration etc. This means that the study of the subject involves a judicious combination of management, social and forestry sciences.?

Forest managers in India do face a challenging task. Problems like human interference, poaching, illicit felling and encroachment of forest land have plagued Indian forests for decades. Effective forest management would also involve evolving strategies to counter these problems.

In recent years, the discipline has also given rise to new concepts like eco-tourism and social forestry. ?Adventure and eco-tourism have caught up in a major way in the south and parts of north India. We are promoting it as well and this is the future of tourism,? says Kalyan Bhattacharya, chief accounts officer, West Bengal Forest Development Corporation Ltd (WBFDC).