NCERT Solutions Curiosity Chapter 11 .4 Forests

Q1.

Discuss with your friends and make a list of at least five products that we get from forests.

Answer

Far more than five — here is a full list you can pick from.

Product	What it is used for
Wood / timber (sal, teak, deodar)	Furniture, doors, windows, boats, farm tools
Firewood and charcoal	Cooking and heating
Bamboo and cane	Baskets, mats, ladders, huts, scaffolding, agarbatti sticks
Fruits, nuts and seeds	Amla (nellikai), jamun, mahua, tamarind, chironji
Medicinal plants	Neem, tulsi, ashwagandha, sarpagandha, giloy
Honey and beeswax	Food and candles — collected in the Sundarbans and Nilgiris
Gum, resin and lac	Gum from babool, resin from chir pine, lac for bangles and polish
Tendu leaves and sal seeds	A source of income for many forest-dwelling families
Paper and plywood raw material	Pulpwood from plantations
Fodder and green leaf manure	Feed for cattle and goats; leaves ploughed back into fields

The products we cannot pack in a bag: a forest also gives clean air, shade and cool weather, rain, and it holds the soil with its roots so that it is not washed away. It is a natural home for wild animals, birds and insects. These free services are worth more than everything in the table above.

Note Ajji’s rule: in her village they do not pluck fruits from the trees — only the fallen ones are collected, so that the fruit is left for animals and birds. That single custom keeps the forest feeding everyone.

Q2.

What are the consequences of cutting a large forest area? Make a presentation or do a role play, or write a story or a poem that shows what could happen if we continue to cut down trees in our forests.

Answer

What must go into your presentation, play, story or poem: the effects come one after another, like falling dominoes.

What happens first	What follows
Roots no longer hold the soil	Rain washes the fertile topsoil away; the land becomes barren; rivers and dams fill with silt
No leaf-fall on the ground	No decaying leaves, so the soil loses its nutrients
Fewer trees to soak up rain	Water runs off quickly — floods in the rains, dry wells in summer
Homes of animals destroyed	Birds, insects and wild animals lose food and shelter; elephants and leopards stray into villages
Less shade, fewer trees	The area becomes hotter and drier
Fewer trees to absorb carbon dioxide	More carbon dioxide stays in the air; the air becomes more polluted
Forest produce disappears	Families who live on honey, tendu leaves and medicinal plants lose their livelihood
It takes many years to grow a new forest	The loss is not repaired in our lifetime

Sample story outline (adapt it in your own words):

“The Last Tree of Devgarh” — Devgarh village sits below a green hill. Every year a few more trees are cut for timber. The children still find amla and mahua. Ten years later the hill is bare. The monsoon comes and, with no roots to hold it, the soil slides down and buries the fields. In summer the well runs dry and the peacocks stop coming. Old Ajji tells the children about the Chipko movement — how in the early 1970s in Uttarakhand, local women encircled and hugged the trees to protect them from being felled. The children begin a Van Mahotsav in Devgarh, plant saplings on the hill, and promise each sapling a name and a caretaker. Years later, the peacocks return.

Why a story works better than a lecture: the loss of a forest is slow, so nobody notices it year by year. A story compresses twenty years into five minutes and lets the audience see the change.

NCERT Solutions Curiosity Chapter 11 .4 Forests — In-text Questions