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Isolated and hostile, the rugged and densely forested provinces of the New Conquests of Goa are usually seen as a space of alterity in relation to the Portuguese imperial order, mainly because of their ecological, social and cultural specificities. This paper proposes a preliminary analysis of the colonial attempts to govern this territory, by looking at the work of the Forestry Committee of 1863, which aimed at ordering and administering the forests of Goa. By taking the colonial governance of natural resources as its object, this paper takes inspiration from the large number of studies that have been dedicated to the Environmental History of Empires, particularly in the case of British India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]