Bhubaneswar: Odisha is ahead of all other states in the country with the maximum cases of wildfire being detected in the State. This fact has surfaced in a report of the Forest Survey of India (FSI), a source said Thursday.
The information was also reflected in a recent statement by the Union Minister of State (MoS) for Environment, Forest and Climate Change Ashwini Kumar Choubey in the Parliament, during its Budget Session.
According to the report, India witnessed as many as 3,45,989 incidents of forest fire in between November 2020 to June 2021, of which 51,968 cases were seen in the state alone.
It was followed by Madhya Pradesh (47,795), Chhattisgarh (38,106), Maharashtra (34,025), Jharkhand (21,713), Uttarakhand (21,487), Andhra Pradesh (19,328), Telangana (18,237), Mizoram (12,846), Assam (10,718) and Manipur (10,457), the FSI report mentioned.
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Usually, due to the plenty of dry leaves, twigs and wood in between November to May every year, a number of wildfire incidents are witnessed in the country during this period. Most of the forest fires take place on land surfaces, hence destroy the greeneries.
FSI gathers information about the incidents of wildfire from authorised persons, the Minister Choubey had informed the House.
It is pertinent to mention here that another survey was earlier jointly conducted by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) and World Bank on ‘Fire management in Indian forests’.
Certain proactive measures were recommended in the report for the prevention of wildfire, among which were inclusion of local villagers for the purpose and precautionary measures to be adopted much before an incident of forest fire takes place.
Alarmingly, forest fire has given rise to the amount of carbon in the atmosphere from 6.34 million tonnes to 123.84 million tonnes during the said period, the FSI had estimated.
The responsibility with regard to fire control firstly lies with all the state governments as well as Union Territories (UTs). However, the Central government provides financial assistance and fire-fighting equipments to the states and UTs, under its different schemes.
Accordingly, assistance amount to the tune of around Rs 125 crore has been provided by the Centre to the state government in between FY 2018-19 to FY 2020-21.
The total number of authorised persons through whom FSI gathers information about the incidents of wildfire has reached 1.30 lakh.
Apart from that, the FSI provides information on occurrences of forest fire to the states and UTs on a weekly basis.
Central government had previously formed a committee at the national level that prepares action plans with coordination of the state level monitoring committees for effective fire control.
PNN
