In just 8 months, J&K reports 66% cases of 6,500 fire incidents taken place in 4 yrs
The green treasure of Jammu and Kashmir appears to have become more vulnerable to fire incidents as over 66 percent cases of around 6,500 forest fires, which took place during the last four years, have been reported between November 2021 and June 2022.
According to the official sources, the Forest Survey of India (FSI) have detected a total of 6,479 forest fires by using SNPP-VIIRS sensors in the last four years. These incidents include large, continuous and repeated forest fires.
What is more worrying is that as many as 4,282 forest fires have been reported in the last eight months alone. “From November 2018 to June 2019, a total of 661 SNPP-VIIRS Detections were recorded while this number was 438 from November 2019 to June 2020. Since then, there has been substantial increase in the number of fire incidents across Jammu and Kashmir,” sources said.
Sources revealed that as many as 1,098 forest fires were reported between November 2020 to June 2021 which further went up to 4,282 incidents from November 2021 to June 2022.
“The continuous dry spell mostly in the month of March and April across Jammu and Kashmir flared massive forest fires. The data showed that there had been more than 100 forest fires in the UT in just 15 days of these months,” sources said.
A senior officer of the forest department, who declined to be named, said: “In summers, we do face the problem of fire incidents in forests for which we have drawn a preventive action plan. All the DFOs have been asked to strictly adhere to the action plan so that the loss of forest wealth is minimized in case of any fire incident,”
The total forest area of J&K is 39.15 percent of the total geographical area of 2.22 lakh hectares while Ladakh has a forest cover of just 1.35 percent of its total geographical area.
According to official records, about 59 per cent of forest area is under permanent snow cover, glaciers and cold desert (Ladakh region) where it is not possible to grow trees due to physical limitations.
Pertinently, Union Ministry Environment, Forest And Climate Change in collaboration with the World Bank had conducted a study on Situation Analysis of Forest Fire and released a study report titled “Strengthening Forest Fire Management in India” which contains various recommendations regarding forest fire prevention, detection, suppression, post-fire management, engaging with communities, coordination with other agencies etc.
Inputs from the study were used by the Ministry in preparation of the National Action Plan on Forest Fire which were circulated to all States and UTs to take appropriate action.
