A hot and dry summer and the absence of pre-monsoon showers has set off alarming forest fires in Uttarakhand that have been raging for more than a week. Officials at the office of the Uttarakhand State Disaster Management Authority told Scroll.in that fires have been burning in the forests of the Pauri, Chamoli and Almora districts and official estimates peg the area ablaze at 1,600 acres.The disaster management authority does not have an estimate of the damage to people, wildlife or property yet but some 1,500 villages are at risk.
Photographer Anup Sah was traveling between between the towns of Khairna in Almora district and Bhowali in Nainital district on Tuesday when he counted more than ten fires along the 20 kilometre stretch. Sixty six-year-old Sah has lived in Nainital all his life and is also a mountaineer familiar with mountain landscapes across India. He says that forest fires are common in Uttarakhand during summers but he's never seen a blaze this bad. Sah had observed the effect of the drought creeping in before the blaze began."The drought this year has been bad and, in places like Almora, the streams have dried up and the seeds sown in croplands have failed to germinate," said Sah.
The state government wants to declare five districts – Almora, Pithoragarh, Nainital, Rudrapur and Pauri, which is a total of 74,000 hectares of land – as drought-affected, state officials told the press on Thursday.
The state administration has pressed its fire fighters into service but as the blaze continues has requested assistance from the centre. According to a Press Trust of India report, Uttarakhand governor KK Paul has asked that the number of personnel deployed to douse the fires be doubled from 3,000 to 6,000.
Forest mismanagement?
"Knowing the fact that this summer was going to be very hot, we were not prepared," said Anil Joshi, founder of the Himalayan Environmental Studies and Conservation Organisation. Joshi believes that multiple factors have contributed to the disaster. "There were no winter rains that helped keep moisture in the soil," he said. "The there was the heat this summer. Added to that there has been no proper management of the forests."
Joshi cited examples of the timber from chir pine trees being cleared from forests but the highly combustible needles being left behind, providing ample fuel for forest fires. He also said that in the Binsar sanctuary, trees struck down by winter storms were not removed. A third contributing factor has been the spread of invasive weeds like Lantana.
The chirpine problem
Fire-prone chir pine trees make up about 16% of Uttarakhand's forest. Last year, the state government made a controversial proposal to chop down lakhs of chir pine trees to be able to control forest fires better. The state's case was that pine needles, which are not edible and often cover the forest floor affecting undergrowth, burn quickly and cause fires to spread faster within forests. Environmentalists protested the move saying that previous attempts to clear dense chir pine growth had resulted in wanton chopping deodar, oak and other vegetation. Rather, they said, the chir pine needles should be collected from the forest and used for their resin.
Such practices, Joshi said, can combine forest management and generation of forestry jobs in the region. "The damage of forests from these fires will run into many crores, which the country will have to bear ultimately," he said. "Why not spend at least Rs 1 crore per year to prevent this?"
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