Massive fires in Uttarakhand jungles pose immense threat to its flora and fauna.
The massive uncontrollable Uttarakhand jungle fires have so far taken the toll of two including a forest employee.
The situation seems to have gone out of control with the jungles left on the mercy of Almighty.
According to latest reports while the jungle fires that erupted on February 2 and still continuing till April 29 has extended further with total of nearly 1,715 fires massively damaging 2,875 hectares of forest land, may be even more with districts of Uttarkashi Garhwal, especially Pithoragarh, Almora n Bageshwar, the worst hit. Some pictures by Suman Negi posted in social media showing massive jungle fires have almost damaged the jungles of Paithani with dangerous fire coming near the villages.
There have been reports of these jungle fires damaging the class rooms of schools, adversely impacting the temperature, polluting the environment and damaging the flora and fauna to tremendous extent.
According to the latest news reports the forest department is having tremendous shortage of forest guards and the Nainital High Court has in 2018 already issued a firm, clear cut directives to the state government to immediately fill the vacancies, but nothing has been done in this regard despite the hard fact that the jungle fires in every summer season, especially during April, May and June these jungle fires create havoc destroying thousands of hectares of forest land leading to human loss as well to flora and fauna.
Uttarakhand has 71% of area under forest cover with major part of it being reserve forest and rest under forest Panchayat.
According to a News18 report at least 1,190 incidents of fires were recorded in the reserve or protected forests and 571 in Van Panchayat area.
What is surprising, rather shocking to note is that despite the court’s order for extinguishing the jungle fires through water spraying on burning jungles via helicopters is still a dream with the forest department of Uttarakhand still thinking on the idea to be implemented than practically coming into action.
Meanwhile, there had been several tweets by people on massive Rishikesh jungle fires posing not only danger to the flora and fauna but to the human settlements as well initially raising the temperature and gradually coming nearer to the township.
According to AN INDIAN WARRIOR with pictures of burning forests of Rishikesh posted on April 29, 2022 the tweet says : SAD BUT TRUE ! RECOGNISE THE PLACE. Am Sure No. RISHIKESH HILLS ENGULFED IN MAN MADE FIRES. HUMAN GREED, NOTHING ELSE. THANKS TO THE LAND MAFIA WITH THE BACKING OF THE POWERFUL.
Another tweet of April, 19 by VIKAS S SHARMA SAYS with pictures tagged says : Fire in Rishikesh Jungle. . No one bothered about it . It’s affect on nature . … Pollution, animals are suffering but who cares tweeted Sharma.
What is interesting to note that on April 23rd an enlightened citizen and a proactive social worker always concerned for Uttarakhand’s environment, civic responsibilities and on burning state issues Dr. Anoop Nautiyal had appealed to Uttarakhand CM Pushkar Singh Dhami to assign responsibility and fix the accountability for spike in forest fires of Uttarakhand and failure to curb them but till date there has been no response in this regard despite the very fact that jungle fires are on rampant increase. In his tweet Dr Nautiyal wrote : I am pained to hear about death of a fire watcher in # Uttarakhand. While many factors are responsible for annual forest fires, our officials need to answer whether they are doing enough to curb the menace. I urge CM@pushkardhami to assign responsibilities and fix accountability tweeted CM P. S. Dhami.
