CHENNAI: Field staff from the Akkamalai Grass Hills National Park in Anamalai Tiger Reserve (ATR), where a wildfire gutted hundreds of hectares of grasslands and nearly threatened climate sensitive montane Sholas, said that the fire took place due to the forest department’s failure to carry out “cooling fire or controlled burning” for several years. As a result, the hills were covered with thick and tall dry grass measuring 4 to 6 feet. All it required was a small piece of ember to burn the place down.
This correspondent had trekked to Akkamalai Grass Hills recently before the forest fire and saw first hand years of neglect. The counter burning was not done even once in past decade, a field staff confirmed to TNIE and added, “It not only makes the place vulnerable to forest fires but also blocks the growth of fresh grass, which acts as fodder for elephants and Nilgiris Tahr.”
ATR Deputy Director K Bhargava Teja accepted the mistake and said, “Kerala forest department does counter burning every year in one-third of their grasslands in the bordering Eravikulam National Park, but we have not done it for years. I will propose it from next year.”
Teja said that a full damage assessment commenced on Wednesday. “No doubt it was a major fire and it was challenging for ground teams to douse the fire, since strong winds helped fire to spread wildly. Still, we managed to save Shola forests. The two prominent Shola forest patches, named Mango and India, escaped the devastation. Our teams did a fabulous work, despite several constraints. So far, there are no reports of any animal deaths,” he said.
A conservationist from the Coimbatore region said Shola forests and associated grasslands store large quantities of water on the mountain ranges, thus serving as huge water harvesting and storage structures.
“Shola is a very sensitive type of vegetation. Once it vanishes from its original habitat, it is very difficult to make it reappear in view of the change in climate which does not allow Shola seedling to grow in open grasslands. We are lucky that the fire did not reduce some of pristine shola forests in Akkamalai into ashes,” they said.
An anti-poaching watcher, who was involved in fire fighting, told TNIE that last time Akkamalai Grass Hills saw such a large fire was in 2012 and before that it was in 2004. “The soil here is very moist and the temperature drops below zero degrees at night. If not for unchecked grass growth, the fire would not have spread in hundreds of hectares. We had no option but to wait for the fire to subside on its own by which time large area was gutted.”