Statistics of forest reserves in Palestine before 1948 (Nakba), British Mandate: A Survey of Palestine: Volume I - Page 429. Chapter XI: Irrigation and Drainage

CHAPTER XI.

thereafter blown away by wind and washed away by rain : water is lost instead of being retained by the soil and the resultant floods cause damage near and far. The remedy lies in the curtailment of the numbers of animals to be grazed and in radical change of the present regime, familiar to scores of past generations. The instinctive and traditional methods of a peasant population are not easily altered and persistent attempts to give practical instruction in this matter by precept, demonstration and persuasion must be continued for a considerable period.

Statistics of forest reserves.

17. The total area of uncultivated lands which, up till 31st March, 1945, bad been proclaimed as forest reserves, i.e. in which cultivation is prohibited, is shown in table 1 below; the extent to which these reserves have been closed for the effective protection of the vegetation from cutting and grazing is also indicated; and figures are given of the lands within the forest reserves to which the title of Government has been confirmed by land settlement operations; these last figures are sub-divided between those State Domains which have been formally handed over to the Department of Forests for conservation and those which have not vet been so allocated. In table 2 below are given the total areas of forest lands claimed as State Domain before the settlement officers 'during each financial year since 1941/.12 and the areas actually adjudicated as State Domain in the final schedules of rights.

Table 1.

Area in dunums.

Area. in

(a) Total forest reserves

(b) Forest reserves closed to grazing

(c) Forest reserves "settled" as State Domain: (I) Allocated to forestry

(2) Not yet allocated to forestry

750,696 73,333

187,172 18,358

113,067 74,728

28,267 18,707

N.B. The area under (a) includes those under (b) and (c). The total area of forest reserves surveyed and demarcated is 565,346 dunums.

Table 2.

Year.

Forest areas claimed at land settlement (in dunums}.

Forest areas adjudged in favour of Government at land settlement

(in dunums).

1941-42 1942-48 1948-44 1944-45

2,474 184,276 14,234 84,037

14,254 45,367 20,237 60,355

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