North Lakhimpur: The illegal cutting down of exotic Khair trees and the smuggling of its logs at the plantation land in Assam’s Lakhimpur District Soil Conservation department at Chawuldhowa has led to the arrest of three persons and recovery of some timbers.
A team of Lakhimpur district forest department officials from its Pathali Palm Forest Beat conducted a search operation on Thursday afternoon in the Dharmapur village under Chawuldhowa Police Outpost.
The forest team recovered 20 logs of Khair tree from a place at the village and detained three persons—Pavitra Chutia, Bap Das and Dilip Das for their alleged involvement in the tree felling and smuggling.
The forest department operation comes in the midst of widespread public concern on the rampant cutting down of trees at the Soil Conservation plantation site located on the left side bank of Subansiri river in Sonapur near Chawuldhowaghat in Lakhimpur district.
Timber smugglers have been felling the exotic Khair trees in the Soil Conservation plantation in recent times and transporting the logs on boats through the Subansiri River, to different destinations. Previously, Lakhimpur District Forest department did not act against it as the land belonged to Soil Conservation department.
Khair (Senegalia catechu), a deciduous, thorny tree from where Kattha (catechu), is extracted which is used as an ingredient to give red colour and typical flavour to Paan.
The market value of Kattha is around Rs 1,200 per kg and is always in demand across the country. Similarly the timber of Khair tree is sold at Rs 60,000 per cubic meter.
There is no processing industry of Khair in Assam except one in Dhola in Tinsukia. The logs of Khair trees are also smuggled to Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Gujarat.
Khair tree is also an important source of fodder for elephants in the region. It was planted along with other several native species of trees in a bid to secure a major elephant habitat and mitigate conflicts between humans and tuskers in the Rowta Reserve Forest under the Dhansiri Forest Division in the Udalguri district of Assam in August this year.