page_title: Hugh Cleghorn (forester)
section_title: Madras Forest Department
hierarchical_section_title: Hugh Cleghorn (forester) / India / Madras Forest Department
caption_attribution_description: Douglas_Hamilton,_Alan,_Foot_of_the_Poonachy_Pass_Crossing_the_Torakudu_River.jpg
context_page_description: Hugh Francis Clarke Cleghorn of Stravithie, FRSE FLS LLD was a Madras-born Scottish physician who worked in India and pioneered as a botanist and in forest conservancy. Cleghorn, sometimes known as the father of scientific forestry in India, was instrumental in the creation of the forest department in the Presidency of Madras. The plant genus Cleghornia was named after him by the botanist Robert Wight. Cleghorn returned to Scotland in 1869 and developed forestry education in Scotland and established a lecturership at the University of Edinburgh.
context_section_description: While in Britain in 1848 on sick leave, he gave several speeches about the failure of agriculture in India. These lectures spurred the Government of India to introduce forest conservation policies and Forest Departments in India and other colonies as well. He took part in cataloguing the raw-products shown in 1851. In 1855 Cleghorn was asked by Lord Harris to organise the Madras Forest Department and started systematic forest conservancy. In 1856 he was appointed Conservator of Forests in Madras Presidency.
  Cleghorn saw the growth of the railways as being a major threat to the forests. He had seen a similar pattern in Scotland in the 1850s and he estimated, in the Madras Presidency, that a mile of rail line needed 1760 wooden sleepers which would have a life of eight years. In addition to the sleepers, wood was needed to run the steam engines of the railways apart from their use in steamships. By his estimate, there was no way to maintain the supply without destroying the forests unless some special management was undertaken. He pointed out that Britain was in a better state because of the reserves of coal and the ability to import wood from other parts of its Empire.
  Cleghorn, along with Alexander Gibson, Edward Balfour and others believed in the role of forests in hydrology and the flow of rivers. He would comment on the influence of forests on climate in a quest led by the British Association for the Advancement of Science around the 1850s.
  Cleghorn's studies in botany were mainly made with a view to applications. In 1853, he published his research on the hedge-plants of the Mysore-Madras region. An earlier "Report on the Hedge Plants of India" read at the meeting of the British Association in 1850 won him a "medium gold medal" of the Highland and Agricultural Society in 1851. In 1856 he wrote a note on the sand-binding plants of the Madras beach. In 1853 he published Hortus Madraspatensis, a catalogue of the plants grown in the Agri-Horticultural Society's Garden in Madras.
  
  Cleghorn's persistent campaigning with the Government resulted in the banning of "kumri", a form of shifting cultivation in the Madras Presidency in 1860. The ban was finally ordered while he was again on leave in Britain. Returning to Scotland he married Mabel, daughter of Charles Cowan, Penicuik on 8 August 1861.
  In 1858, Cleghorn visited the Anamalai range along with Major Douglas Hamilton, sent by Sir Patrick Grant as an illustrator, and wrote on the landscape and botany of the region. Other members of the team included Richard Henry Beddome, J.W. Cherry (collector of Coimbatore) and two doctors among others.
  In 1861, he returned to take up the post of Joint Commissioner for Conservancy of Forests, a position shared with Dietrich Brandis.
caption: Foot of the Poonachy Pass, from Forests and gardens of South India
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