With dense black smoke clouds billowing in the sky for miles, the picturesque snow-capped mountain peaks in the western Himalayan region in north India suddenly disappeared from sight earlier this month.
The overpowering smell of wood smoke emanating from massive wildfires interrupted the tranquility of the hilly terrain, as the infernal glow along with the piercing siren of fire engines and buzzing rotor wings of helicopters spraying water from air startled the local inhabitants. Worse still, the steaming jungle flame, which spread across the provinces of Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and parts of Indian-administered Kashmir, did not even spare two popular tiger reserves in the region and also endangered the world heritage railway line in Shimla, once British India’s summer capital.
And the blazing Himalayas have sparked off an intense debate, with climate change and arsonists being identified as the culprits for fires destroying large swathes of forest in an ecologically sensitive zone. The fires, which started a month ago and intensified gradually, have not only burned through 4,000 hectares of land in northern India and large parts of neighboring Nepal, but also took precious lives, both human and animal. But then, there is no count of animals killed in forest fire and we may never know the extent of damage caused to the flora and fauna.
Unfortunately, there seems to be an administrative apathy in dealing with ecological issues, even though the number of forest fires in the Indian Himalayas in the first four months of 2016 has already exceeded last year’s total number of such incidents. The Modi government has admitted in the Parliament that till April 21, 20,667 incidents of forest fires have taken place as against 15,937 during the same period in 2015, while in entire 2014 and 2013, 19,054 and 18,451 respective incidents of blazes engulfing jungles were officially reported.
According to Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar, forest fire incidents have been reported from across the nation. As per Forest Survey of India figures, 291 forest fires have broken out in Uttarakhand, apart from the recent ones which took the figure to 400 plus; 2,422 and 2,238 incidents were recorded from Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh in India’s central heartland; 2,349 and 1,719 cases respectively have been reported in Odisha and Assam in eastern India; 1,416 cases of fire in forest took place in Andhra Pradesh in southern India’s Deccan plateau region and Maharashtra in the western part of the country recorded 1,638 forest fires. Though the Modi government has formulated a contingency plan to deal with such crisis, there seems to be a lack of realization within the administration that forest fires not only highlight a larger cycle of threats in the sensitive Himalayan ecological zone, but also across India’s rich biodiversity.
Had the authority been a little more cautious, such massive loss of flora and fauna could have been limited, if not averted. Is it not a fact that scientists in the intergovernmental panel on climate change repeatedly warned of monsoon deficits in the Himalayan region as well as the rest of South Asia? And two successive poor monsoon seasons in 2014 and 2015 had an adverse effect on the climate, as it took the sting out of winter chill, resulting in low moisture in trees and the soil, which holds them. It is this unusual dryness that has exacerbated the forest fires, allowing it to spread fast and extensively. Not many are aware that forest fire has become so regular and widespread in western Himalayas in recent years that even cities like Beijing and Delhi will find it difficult to match the cloud of smoke that hangs over the region during fire season. But has there been any serious study to examine the effects of such wildfires, which can result in long-term damage to the ecosystem or human civilization as a whole?
Since 1984, the forests of the western Himalayas have burned every summer without getting extinguished. And indiscriminate planting of chir pine trees as an afforestation measure has resulted in rapid spread of forest fire, because pine prevents undergrowth and dries out the soil faster than broad-leaved trees like oak, while its resin rich cones are highly inflammable. Experts say, soot from wildfires flying all over the Himalayas can hasten the melting of icy glaciers, which usually reflect a lot of the sun’s heat away from their surfaces. But with thick soot being deposited on the ice slowly and steadily, this unique reflecting power would be compromised and the glaciers, as a result, will absorb more heat and melt faster than ever before.
This can have a catastrophic effect downstream, with water levels in rivers inflating all of a sudden. Global warming has, in fact, incentivized a peculiar shifting of flora from eastern to western part of the Himalayas, with exclusive eastern Himalayan species now colonizing the comparatively less green western portion as winters have become comparatively warmer with increase in overall humidity. Besides, regular burning of forests has wiped out communities of precious insects, birds, amphibians, reptiles and even mammals except for highly adaptable creatures like macaques and wild boar, which have shifted to agricultural fields for sustenance. Now that the issue has attracted public glare, thus piling up pressure on the government to act fast, it is time to enact special laws to check forest arsonists, break the unholy timber-real estate contractor nexus, and cull pine trees up to at least 30 years old so as to refurbish depleted biodiversity.
The overpowering smell of wood smoke emanating from massive wildfires interrupted the tranquility of the hilly terrain, as the infernal glow along with the piercing siren of fire engines and buzzing rotor wings of helicopters spraying water from air startled the local inhabitants. Worse still, the steaming jungle flame, which spread across the provinces of Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and parts of Indian-administered Kashmir, did not even spare two popular tiger reserves in the region and also endangered the world heritage railway line in Shimla, once British India’s summer capital.
And the blazing Himalayas have sparked off an intense debate, with climate change and arsonists being identified as the culprits for fires destroying large swathes of forest in an ecologically sensitive zone. The fires, which started a month ago and intensified gradually, have not only burned through 4,000 hectares of land in northern India and large parts of neighboring Nepal, but also took precious lives, both human and animal. But then, there is no count of animals killed in forest fire and we may never know the extent of damage caused to the flora and fauna.
Unfortunately, there seems to be an administrative apathy in dealing with ecological issues, even though the number of forest fires in the Indian Himalayas in the first four months of 2016 has already exceeded last year’s total number of such incidents. The Modi government has admitted in the Parliament that till April 21, 20,667 incidents of forest fires have taken place as against 15,937 during the same period in 2015, while in entire 2014 and 2013, 19,054 and 18,451 respective incidents of blazes engulfing jungles were officially reported.
According to Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar, forest fire incidents have been reported from across the nation. As per Forest Survey of India figures, 291 forest fires have broken out in Uttarakhand, apart from the recent ones which took the figure to 400 plus; 2,422 and 2,238 incidents were recorded from Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh in India’s central heartland; 2,349 and 1,719 cases respectively have been reported in Odisha and Assam in eastern India; 1,416 cases of fire in forest took place in Andhra Pradesh in southern India’s Deccan plateau region and Maharashtra in the western part of the country recorded 1,638 forest fires. Though the Modi government has formulated a contingency plan to deal with such crisis, there seems to be a lack of realization within the administration that forest fires not only highlight a larger cycle of threats in the sensitive Himalayan ecological zone, but also across India’s rich biodiversity.
Had the authority been a little more cautious, such massive loss of flora and fauna could have been limited, if not averted. Is it not a fact that scientists in the intergovernmental panel on climate change repeatedly warned of monsoon deficits in the Himalayan region as well as the rest of South Asia? And two successive poor monsoon seasons in 2014 and 2015 had an adverse effect on the climate, as it took the sting out of winter chill, resulting in low moisture in trees and the soil, which holds them. It is this unusual dryness that has exacerbated the forest fires, allowing it to spread fast and extensively. Not many are aware that forest fire has become so regular and widespread in western Himalayas in recent years that even cities like Beijing and Delhi will find it difficult to match the cloud of smoke that hangs over the region during fire season. But has there been any serious study to examine the effects of such wildfires, which can result in long-term damage to the ecosystem or human civilization as a whole?
Since 1984, the forests of the western Himalayas have burned every summer without getting extinguished. And indiscriminate planting of chir pine trees as an afforestation measure has resulted in rapid spread of forest fire, because pine prevents undergrowth and dries out the soil faster than broad-leaved trees like oak, while its resin rich cones are highly inflammable. Experts say, soot from wildfires flying all over the Himalayas can hasten the melting of icy glaciers, which usually reflect a lot of the sun’s heat away from their surfaces. But with thick soot being deposited on the ice slowly and steadily, this unique reflecting power would be compromised and the glaciers, as a result, will absorb more heat and melt faster than ever before.
This can have a catastrophic effect downstream, with water levels in rivers inflating all of a sudden. Global warming has, in fact, incentivized a peculiar shifting of flora from eastern to western part of the Himalayas, with exclusive eastern Himalayan species now colonizing the comparatively less green western portion as winters have become comparatively warmer with increase in overall humidity. Besides, regular burning of forests has wiped out communities of precious insects, birds, amphibians, reptiles and even mammals except for highly adaptable creatures like macaques and wild boar, which have shifted to agricultural fields for sustenance. Now that the issue has attracted public glare, thus piling up pressure on the government to act fast, it is time to enact special laws to check forest arsonists, break the unholy timber-real estate contractor nexus, and cull pine trees up to at least 30 years old so as to refurbish depleted biodiversity.
