BHUBANESWAR: With progress of summer, a surge in incidence of forest fire is emerging as a challenge for the field staff of Forest department.
Increase in number of wildfires in the recent days has raised the alarm prompting forest authorities to assess the cause of fire points surfacing regularly and put in place coordinated efforts to mitigate their impact.
As per statistics of the Forest Survey of India (FSI) 1,786 forest fire points have been detected in different parts of the state since the wildfire season began in January.
The concern, however, is that nearly 47 per cent of the fire points have been detected in the last nine days. All forest circles have started witnessing a spike in wildfire owing to rise in temperature and dry conditions. Koraput circle, the most affected, has reported close to 1,100 fire points since the beginning of the forest fire season in the state.
What’s worrying is more forest fire incidents could be reported as the season continues till May. While sporadic rain and cloudy weather in certain places of the state during last 72 hours came as a major relief, five large wildfires continued to engulf forests in Balimela, Ghatagaon and Deuli ranges.
PCCF and HoFF Debidutta Biswal said the response to forest fire incidents so far remains up to the mark with teams attending to over 97 pc of the fire points. An assessment carried out by the Forest department recently after a surge in wildfire incidents reveals nearly 35 pc of fire points were man-made and mostly reported outside forests. “However, our forest field staff have been instructed to give equal importance to dousing such flames which otherwise may spread to nearby forests,” he said.
Biswal said DFOs have been asked to strictly follow the forest fire management action plan.