To protect human life there are laws in every corner of the world. Plant life is cheap. One should undersand if plants are gone entire human population will be gone.
When plant life is to be protected the environmental laws are new to the law makers.
When goat eats away your crop or a cow eats away or rojdas (Blue bulls) destroy your crop or insects eat away your crop as hoards of them swarm on it in minutes time, which law provides protection. about goats eating away your crop or for that matter holy cow or rojdas or stray sheeps and wild animals. If this could happen in farm raised and protected by individual farmers, what will happen to the forests which are protected by forest guards which are very few in numbers as compared to the area they have to protect.
It is very easy to circumvent the laws made to protect plants . Its common site that people remove bark of the trees along roadside and in villages. Once the plant is dried up, they are cut and sold as its permitted to sell dead wood though cutting of green plants is not allowed.
This is via media to cut and sell trees which take decades to grow. Motorized transportation of fuel wood is prevented but its common site to see hundreds of camel carts transporting cut trees during night.
Which authority should check this forest or which laws should punish them.
Cutting of trees legally or illegally is the means of livelihood for landless laborers of villages and poor people in tribal areas. Deep forests of Banswara districts , pratapgarh area are nonexistent now as the poor local tribal population sold the logs of sal (Shorea robusta) and teak (Tectona grandis ) as cheap as rupees fifteen some 30 years ago which smart traders sold for thousand of rupees and made millions. Now these plants are not a common site which was their natural habitat only 3 to 4 decades ago.
I am not aware of punishments are meted for cutting trees.
If forests have disappeared whose fault it is. Its time we fix responsibilities as all the wealth of the world even if spread across the globe ( imagine money is coming from UN) can not regenerate tropical rainforests once they are gone. Its time we spend some time preventing the destruction of present vegetation of poor nations before its too late.