Forest Fires - Uttarakhand's Mid-Summer Nightmare

Every summer, in the months of May and June, there are countless forest fires that ravage the beautiful landscape of Uttarakhand and consume it's precious forest cover...

These forest fires are uniformly spread out all over the mountains - both the Garhwal as well as the Kumaon side... Sometimes, they are even close to the main national highways - everyone keeps driving along without a bother as these fires are not a threat to human-life; they just finish off the dry grasses and other shrubbery along the mountain slopes... But at what cost...???

To spot a forest fire when on a trek in Uttarakhand in the summer months, reach up to the high point of wherever your base is, and look out on the horizon for tiny orange blips... These are the fires which burn out when they don't have anything left to burn up... Hopefully, in another few years, if things continue the way they have been all along, the forest fires will be gone for good, as there won't be anything left to burn...!

What a pity...!

Atleast, the regular tourists / hikers should always ensure that they don't chuck a burning cigarette stub or carelessly throw away a not-yet put out match stick wherever they are...

Can something be done to control this annual menace...?
What else can the regular tourist do...?

Comments invited...

Cheers...!

yes, this problem has been t here since a long time ago. i remember it even when i was a small kid. we coudl see the lines of fires around the hills during the night. some say that fires burn the old grass and is good for the new grass which will grow in monsoon. i was reading in today's dainik jagran website, where someone suggested that it can be reduced if the way pine trees are cut for their gum is changed. normally, a cut in the pine trees is made at a lower height to extract the gum (lisa). due to this cut, even the pine trees catch fire from the ground. however, if this cut is made above a certain height, then the pine trees will ntio catch fire and the damage from the fire can be reduced.

many of the forest fires are initiated by man with vested interest.

we are ourselves responsible for this ecological disaster... the fires sometimes are a result of the farmers burning off the dried hay stacks, but not putting off the fires completely... and very often they are also the reslut of man's carelessness - the tourist throwing a cigarette stub or match stick...

the fires are also a major threat in the tiger reserve at corbett national park...

though it's manily the grass cover that they destroy, the fires engulf a large number of pine, cedar, fir and oak trees too... this time around, many acres of forest land skirting rudraprayag in the garhwal region have been engulfed...

hoping for the best...
cheers...!

Updating to this year, 2009 - on Friday there was a huge haze of smoke all over the valley looking down towards Mussoorie from my window. This pall of smoke has now been here, a little less on Saturday and Sunday, but a lot more today, around 5 days. Since I have no TV, I did a google and came up with this link:

http://www.indopia.in/India-usa-uk-n...ational/1/20/1

However, I am unsure of its date as I couldn't locate it. I am presuming it is current?
Are there any local members who could update us please? And if this is indeed in these areas it doesn't bode well for the National Parks. I would also like to know if there are fires in our vicinity and where they are. (Mussoorie, Dehra Dun, Landour area). There is a lot of smoke haze out here now.

chamoli is more affected as per local news .

Thank you anil - that is quite a long way from here. Do you have smoke haze in Dehra Dun like we do? It makes me think there must be fires closer than that.

smoke is looking from dehradun . it is from the nearby hills . dont know what the forest department is doing . today monning hearing the interview of DFO chaomli, he have no answer how to manage fire or what are their planning to control fire. he was only blaming people and trying to caught them.

Just a few days ago (April 24-26) I was travelling in Nanital district in places like Ramgarh and Mukteswar. Sadly the entire region is engulfed in grey smoke. For ordinary tourists like me it was a major disappointment. Normally Mukteswar provides excellent view of all seven peaks on a clear sky day, but since last few days it is only smoke everywhere. Even, while driving down to Kathgodam from Nainital I could see a long blazing necklace of fire very close to NH 87. I could not see any forest department folks. It seems in India we just take it for granted that forest fire is a natural event.

Rajib

That's really sad, rajib, and what worries me too is that I am sure there are small dwellings, villages in these areas too? I used to live in the Blue Mountains, Australia, and forest/bush fires were very much a reality every year, but the organization for fighting them was phenomenal - not only Bush Fire brigades in every town, but also the army would come out as well when things were serious. They also did aerial water bombing by helicopters to stop fire in remote areas spreading further.
Just before I noticed the direction of the wind, and it is indeed blowing from the areas mentioned, so I guess a lot of this haze is coming from there then. When I was a child in NZ, if the wind blew from Australia, even there, across the Tasman we would have smoke haze from fires in Oz.

Good that this thread has been revived, Aishah...

With the temperatures soaring in the plains, the lower hilly areas are at their most vulnerable... Dried up grasslands get crispier in the sun and catch fire more easily... Very often its because of humans; but this can and does very much happen naturally too...

Its important that tourists and trekkers keep a look-out for potential forest fires and do their bit in ensuring that they are averted...

Cheers...!

Not that there was no infrastructure created for forest fires in UA hills. In the early 80s a firefighting core-unit and school was opened in one of Uttarakhand's towns with help from international aid agencies (when it was still a part of UP). This center of excellence was setup complete with surveillance chopper, state-of-art firefighting paraphenalia, a small army of forest guards specially trained for fighting forest fires etc. No points for guessing what the choppers were used for, or where the forest guards were put to work. I don't know if any of that survives, but I do get reminded about it when I hear the word forest-fire. A project way ahead of its times that went nowhere. Oh well...

Interesting post, mountainlad. I'm very ignorant about the actual fire-fighting activities here, but I don't see any evidence of many fire engines etc. around the place. It might well be there and I just don't know about it. These areas in Uttarakhand are so worthy of preservation that there should be proper resources for putting out fires as soon as possible. Up here in Landour, the leaf fall is phenomenal - it all looks sort of green and old trees are standing well, but some of the undergrowth is becoming tinder dry. I think this year is exceptionally dry and hotter for April than previous ones?

I have seen a forest fire myself in Uttarakhand. The people of the village I was staying in told me that when hot dry winds blow the branches of bamboo trees rub against each other and catch fire. I was shocked & amazed to see a large area glowing as if illuminated by Sodium vapor lamp in the night.

Weren't the filaments of some early electric light bulbs made from bamboo?

Are forest fires ever started by lightning in India? That's very common in the American West.