The Orissa semi-evergreen forests are a tropical moist broadleaf forest ecoregion of eastern India. The ecoregion covers an area of 22,300 square kilometers (8,600 sq mi) on the coastal plain of Orissa state, bounded on the north and west by the Eastern Highlands moist deciduous forests and on the south and west by the Bay of Bengal.
The ecoregion has been extensively cleared for agriculture and urbanization. Several of Orissa's largest cities, including Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, Puri, Chhatrapur, Kendrapara, and Bhadrak, lie within the ecoregion. According to the WWF, 96% of the ecoregion's area has been cleared, and only 4% remains in semi-evergreen rain forest. Much of the remaining forest has been degraded by grazing and fuelwood harvesting.
Famous quotes containing the word forests:
“The civilized nations—Greece, Rome, England—have been sustained by the primitive forests which anciently rotted where they stand. They survive as long as the soil is not exhausted. Alas for human culture! little is to be expected of a nation, when the vegetable mould is exhausted, and it is compelled to make manure of the bones of its fathers. There the poet sustains himself merely by his own superfluous fat, and the philosopher comes down on his marrow-bones.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)