Sukkur is fortunate in having more forests than any other District of Pakistan. Prior to the British conquest, annual inundations throughout the province were practically unchecked in their flow and forest growth covered all the land where the water reached. People cut down the timber, made temporary settlements, and tilled the soil wherever  they chose. Certain rive rain forests were reserved by the Mirs (local rulers) for the chase, and walled in with mud walls. These existed in many places and were strictly protected from interference or land transfers among the people by severe laws. After 1843, these game preserves, or shikargahs as they were called, became the nuclei of the present forests of Sindh.

     During 1847 a Major Scott was appointed the first Forest Ranger in Sindh. He was succeeded by two botanists, Dr  Stocks and Mr. Dalzell, and by two Rangers, Captain Hamilton and Captain Crawford. These last two Rangers demarcated all the shikargahs by erecting boundary markers.    

During the last forty years of the nineteenth century, a forest department was gradually built up until it formed a regular  Part of the administration of the country’s resources. The first Conservator of Forests, Dr Schlick, was appointed in 01 1. He organized the department and divided the then  Sindh Circle into three divisions these were later reorganized into four divisions, namely, Sukkur, Nawabshah, Hyderabad, and Jherruk, each having fifteen rangers.

     Forest management from 1860 to 1895 does not appear to have been based on any plan of exploitation and reproduction. Forests were exploited as a convenient resource to meet the local demand of the population and the larger imperialist demands of the old Indus Flotilla Company. In earlier days, the method by which forest lands and resources were disposed of had been according to social rank or need through the share system, whereby the representatives of the rulers who owned various sectors of a town or a District agreed among themselves on the proportion of revenue due to each ruler.

     The system of selling coupes (areas set aside for felling in particular years) by tender or by auction was introduced in 1901.

     The first attempt at systematic management was made between 1875 and 1895. The main methods were rotational cutting and sustained yields. Even those attempts were sporadic, and for the most part forests continued to be worked in areas within easy reach of the railway and the river, with a view to stripping as much revenue as possible and without any regard for improvement or conservation for the future. More systematic management began in 1895. A provisional plan providing for clear-felling in equal and adjacent areas, with a rotation of thirty years for babul (Acacia Arabica) and ten years for kandi (Prosopis spicigera) and Lai (Tamarix indica), was adopted in that year and continued in force for six years

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Rohri, Sukkur, (Sindh) Pakistan.

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