3. National conservation programmes and management of FGR

Many countries have national policies or special programmes for the conservation of biological diversity, including forest biological diversity and FGR. The growing attention to conservation reflects increasing concern about alterations in the forests and the long-term maintenance of the health and overall productivity of forests and forest ecosystems.

The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), adopted in 1992, affirms that States have sovereign rights over their biological resources and that they are responsible for conserving their biological diversity and for using them in a sustainable manner. The CBD relates to ecological, social, economic and ethical values of diversity.

National policies and programmes related to FGR cover a wide range of activities, from conservation measures to protection of rare and endangered species and populations, and regulations governing seed collection and transfer in socioeconomically important tree species to comprehensive approaches to the management of landscapes, ecosystems and FGR. With these complexities in mind, considerations related to FGR in India have been integrated within broad frameworks, such as national forest programmes and biodiversity action plans (Biodiversity Bill 2002).

The management of an appropriate combination of genetic resources in various locations under diverse environmental and silvicultural practices, such as provenance trails and progeny trials, is considered to be the most efficient way to conserve various levels of genetic variation to increase the productivity. However, it takes relatively long time to evaluate and identify the provenances suitable for conservation. However, most often genetic conservation has to be carried out without a real understanding of the genetic background of the populations and depends on population genetic models. In Indian forest ecosystems, some economically important forest tree species have been conserved in genebanks, in situ and ex situ conservation sites with wide networking between the State forest departments. National parks (87) and other protected areas in the form of biosphere reserves (12) and wildlife sanctuaries (421), which have been regarded as in situ conservation and management of FGR at the species level (Tables 2 and 3).

Table 2. Biosphere reserves in India (FSI 2001)

Table 3. National parks and wildlife sanctuaries in India (FSI 2001; Rodegers and Panwar 1986)

In addition, a variety of field repositories of genetic resources, including nature reserves and other protected areas, private and publicly owned, managed and unmanaged, natural forests and plantations, trees outside forests managed in agroforestry systems and growing on homesteads and along rivers and roads, arboreta and botanic gardens, field trials and live collections have also been developed within the framework of selection and tree improvement programmes to increase the productivity of forest.