A Brief History of Forestry.: In Europe, the United States and Other CountriesFernow, B. E. (Bernhard Eduard)
History
A Brief History of Forestry.: In Europe, the United States and Other Countries
Fernow, B. E. (Bernhard Eduard)
Forests and forestry -- History
Mr. Brandis as early as 1869 saw also the necessity of providing the
means of giving the natives of India some sort of technical education in
forestry. The first step in this direction was to place natives,
selected ones, under one or two officers of the Imperial Service who
were deemed fit to instruct them, and in this way a few good men were
turned out. Another experiment, after the German pattern, was made by
apprenticing likely young men under some forester for a year or two and
then sending them to an engineering school for theoretical instruction.
This was also a failure. After much hard work, the Indian forest school
at Dehra Dun was established in 1878, the forests between the Jumna and
the Ganges rivers were set aside as training grounds, formed into a
special Forest Circle and placed under the control of the director of
the school. These forests have been subjected to regular systems of
management, based on European experience, and excellent results have
been obtained. The first course of systematic theoretical instruction
was opened on the 1st of July, 1881. In 1884 the school was made an
imperial institution by the Government of India, and the
Inspector-General of Forests was charged with its supervision, under a
Board of Control, consisting of the Inspector-General, the Director, and
three Conservators, with the Assistant Inspector-General as secretary.
This board meets once a year at Dehra, conducts the examinations, and
looks into all of the workings of the School very carefully. There were
two courses--one in which the teaching was given in English for rangers,
the other in which the instruction was given in the vernacular for
foresters; courses extending over 24 months. In 1906 the school was
raised to the rank of a college and the course in the vernacular
abolished. The graduates may aspire to the rank of division officers.
The training of lower grade officers is left to the provinces. The
Bombay Presidency had for some time their own forest school in
connection with the Engineering College at Poona, but this is now
abandoned. Another school, however, is located at Tharrawaddy, with a
two-year course in Burmese, and one in Madras with a one-year course; so
that the education of lower grade officials is well attended to.
Forest Experiment and Investigations have never been systematically
instituted, being left to individual initiative, but lately (1909)
provision has been made in this direction in connection with the Dehra
Dun school by the establishment of an Imperial Research Institute.
Besides a monthly journal, the Indian Forester which came into existence
in 1875 through Schlich’s initiative, and the annual reports of the
various conservators and of the Inspector-General, a small book
literature has developed within the last ten or fifteen years.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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