BHUBANESWAR: Union Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change Prakash Javadekar on Wednesday directed his department authorities to send an expert team to help the State government in controlling the unprecedented wildfire in Similipal biosphere. A three-member expert team is likely to visit Odisha on Thursday. It will tender expert technical advice and handholding towards early and effective control of the forest fires in Similipal and other regions of the State. Javadekar's directive came after a delegation of BJP MPs led by Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan met him.
The Ministry has constituted a committee comprising Inspector General of Forests, National Tiger Conservation Authority, Amit Mallick, Deputy Director General, MoEF&CC Regional Office, Bhubaneswar, Subrat Mahapatra and Head, Silviculture -ICFRE Arti Chaudhary as fire expert.The initial terms of reference for the team will be assessment of the status of fire incidents in Odisha.
It will extend expert and technical advice to the State for fire containment in forest area along with informing status of loss of forest and wildlife and its relationship with poaching, if any. The team will be working till the State attains a normal situation.Javadekar said he will be monitoring the situation everyday with the Ministry team on a daily basis.
Expressing concern over the extensive damage to wildlife and forest wealth due to the wildfire, the 10-member delegation requested Javadekar for preparation of a long-term plan jointly by the Ministry and Odisha forest officials and an empowered committee to monitor the fire fighting measures.
In a memorandum, the BJP lawmakers said according to Forest Survey of India (FSI)'s fire alert system and satellite pictures of NASA's Fire Information for Resource Management System, 19,233 fire spots were reported in forest areas across Odisha since February 28 while 23,859 forest fires were counted since November 1 last year, the highest among all the states.
As per the FSI fire alert system, the State witnessed around 7,000 new fire points from March 7. Union Minister Pratap Sarangi, MPs Aparajita Sarangi, Basanta Panda, Bishweswar Tudu, Sangeeta Singh Deo, Nitesh Ganga Deb, Ashwini Vaishnaw, Raghunath Mohapatra and Suresh Pujari were part of the delegation.