Parliamentary Panel on Forest Fire

• The Parliamentary panel has submitted its report on forest fire in India. This panel was formed after a series of devastating forest fires earlier this year, including the prolonged one that charred 4,000 hectares of forest land across 13 districts of Uttarakhand.

Highlights of the report:

• The number of total incidents of forest fire has touched 24,817 in 2016, which is a “really alarming” rise, from around 15,937 fires in 2015.
• The three central States of Odisha, Chhattisgarh, and Madhya Pradesh contribute a third of the forest fires. Madhya Pradesh has seen a nearly ten-fold increase, from just 294 in 2015 to more than 2,600 in 2016.
• The report primarily focuses on the prevention and containing of fires in the Himalayan forests spread across Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, and Jammu and Kashmir. In Himachal and Uttarakhand, over 17,502 acres have been ravaged this year due to forest fires — a rise of over 171 per cent.
• Accumulated Chir pine needles — which are inflammable due to their high-resin content — are believed to be a “prominent factor in occurring and spreading of forest fires”.
• The committee has recommended the procurement of sweeping machines to clear roadsides of Chir pine needles, while advocating large-scale incentives and programmes (including under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act) to collect pines for use as fuel, and other incineration.
• The committee has also observed that a large number of posts of front line forest staff were lying vacant, while, fire-fighting equipment is rudimentary in many cases.
• The panel also flayed the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change over the declining trend of funds released by the government for protection of forests and controlling forest fires.
• The Committee also recommends that broad tree leaves should be planted in forests, and after a period of five years, there should be a systematic replacement of chir pine trees in forests by broad leaves as it has been seen that the incident of fires in latter forest are minimal as compared to chir pine trees
• It also recommended that the government should approach countries like Canada, Australia and New Zealand, which witness a large number of forest fire cases, and study the use of other systems used for fire fighting such as chemical fogging.
• The committee has suggested a national policy on managing forest fires.

Analysis:

• In this summer, the pine forests of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh caught fire. Over 4,500 hectares was affected in Himachal Pradesh, some 40% more than the 3,185 hectares in Uttarakhand.
• By May 2016, the fire had damaged around 3500 hectares of land and claimed at least seven human lives apart from loss of fauna and flora. Uttarakhand is known for human induced forest fires since long time.
• Forest fires cause serious health hazards by producing smoke and noxious gases such as Carbon Dioxide, Carbon monoxide, methane, hydrocarbons, nitric oxide and nitrous oxide that lead to serious consequences for local climate.
• Forest fire leads to loss of timber, bio-diversity, loss of wildlife habitat, global warming, soil erosion, loss of fuel wood and fodder, damage to water and other natural resources, loss of natural regeneration
• Forest fire also leads to changes in microclimate of the region in the form of soil moisture balance and increased evaporation. The dense smoke from the fires affected visibility.
   

By: Vishal