CHAPTER V.
FORESTS.
Early Operations—Progress of reservation. Settlement—Proprietary rights—Susceptibilities of the jungle tribes—Podu cultivation. Administration—In Rampa—In the rest of the Agency—River transit rules—Fire-protection—Artificial reproduction; casuarina—Mangrove—Introduction of exotics, etc. General Character of the Forests—On the coast—In the uplands —In Pólavaram and Yellavaram—In Rampa—In Bhadráchalam—Timber and the market for it—Minor forest produce—Forest revenue.
The best forests in the district are those in the Agency, and trade in their timber, facilitated as it is by the waterway provided by the Gódávari river, has flourished from the earliest times. The Committee of Circuit (see p. 162) refer to it as far back as 1786 and it was still in existence when the Government recently began forest conservancy. The Bhadráchalam and Rékapalle country was the chief centre. Dealers from the plains employed the Kóyas and hill Reddis to cut timber at so much a log, or bamboos at so much a thousand, and to drag them to the riverside, where they were made into rafts and floated down stream1[1] to the markets nearer the coast.
Forest conservancy was first begun in the Bhadráchalam taluk, which was transferred to the district from the Central Provinces in 1874. Soon after the transfer, the Madras Government threw open its forests to exploitation on the permit system, and annually netted a very fair revenue from them.2[2] In 1876-77 reserves amounting to 138 square miles (subsequently reduced to 68 square miles) were selected in the taluk by Mr. Boileau, the Deputy Conservator of Forests who had been sent to the district for the purpose; but the hill tribes were permitted to cut whatever wood they chose for their own use, and complaints were frequently made that they sold timber and other produce to outside dealers. Although only four guards were sanctioned for the protection of these reserves, yet the average annual revenue between 1874 and 1882 was Rs. 21,000, while the expenditure averaged only Rs. 3,800. In the latter of these two years Mr. Boileau reported very unfavourably on the condition of the forests; and Dr. (afterwards Sir Dietrich) Brandis, who was then
