Come, the summer of May, June and Uttarakhand’s forests’ are on massive fire! When would this menace end, after all?

Come summer, particularly May, June and Uttarakhand’s jungles are on massive fire. This has now become a sort of a tradition and despite this highly damaging feature going on for years together the successive governments and the forest departments have proved to be completely futile and effectless rather highly complacent in countering this dastardly menace.

For the last several days the jungles of Pauri , Chamoli, Rudraprayag and Tehri Garhwal districts are on massive fire with no serious exercise on the part of the authorities concerned to ensure that the fire is countered and the jungles and the lives of the animals and the species saved forthwith.

Remember last year and in 2016, the massive fire having started from jungles of the Pauri Garhwal district has enraged the forests of almost entire Uttarakhand causing infinite loss to the green trees, flora and fauna and the creatures inside the jungle who were literally roasted.

The massive jungle fire in the Uttarakhand Himalayas have left behind a trail of sorrow n anguish then (2016,17) . The acute environmental tragedy has not only damaged the lungs of the nation that were providing the whole nation pure oxygenated air but have also led to the loss of eight human lives n colossal loss to wild life , our environment, massive treasure of green trees, grass, insects, butterflies, reptiles and growing plants in initial stages.

This huge jungle fire that originally started on 23rd February in the jungles of Kedarnath division in just one hectare of area finally engulfed about 3739 hectares till 4th May, 2016 due to the utter failure, negligence, ignorance and complacence of the forest department and the related government authorities.

Uttarakhand Himalayas are considered to be the lungs of the entire nation and Asian sub continent which give us pure oxygenated air but after this highly deadly fire which almost damaged more than 60 % of the jungles of about 11 districts of Uttarakhand have resulted in makeing our environment hot and vitiated.

Today, Uttarakhand has lost its credibility as the green forests and lungs of the nation. Uttarakhand Himalaya is dominated by 71 % jungles and greenery n these extensive fires have reduced its jungles to 30% supposedly.

According to Anil Joshi, eminent environmentalist and chief of HESCO , these ravaging fires of UK jungles have damaged our ecology to such a grave extent that the trees which used to soak or absorb carbon dioxide from the environment and release fresh oxygen, have today unfortunately become the main source to release carbon dioxide in abudance after their being burnt completely.

The microflore and fauna maintain the ecosystem of the jungles but these have now turn into ashes. If there will be rains, there are chances of massive lanslides leading to further ecological catastrophes.

When the Britishers ruled India they roped in excessive pine trees in the Uttarakhand hills with the vested interest of getting maximum timber for construction purposes.

Hence Uttarakhand jungles are today covered with 17 % of Chir pine trees which are not only useless from the productive and environmental angle but are making the hill lands acidic, not prone for agricultural or plant produce.

During the eruption of fires in this mountainous ranges these pine trees’ needles result in making the fire more furious thus posing direct challenge to to the green jungles. Since Lisa emanating out from these pine trees also fetches high profit in addition to the timber value, the Britishers focussed their attention on growing more n more pine trees.

Keeping in view the increasing demand from the environmentalists to get the Uttarakhand hills rid of these futile pine trees, the government finally bowed down an proposed to cut these pines in large numbers replacing it with environmentally friendly species , but it was felt that it will again led to the timber mafia promotion as Uttarakhand forests will become bald n the mafias would earn handsome profit in league with those sitting at the helm in the government. This may further result in huge catastrophes like floods n other natural calamities.

Therefore the need today is to get rid of these pine trees in a phased manner and simultaneous plantation of the productive spieces’ trees against each pine tree to be felled.

It’s not the first time that Uttarakhand Jungles have witnessed fire. There had been jungle fires since time immemorial but during the earlier times these deliberate fires were created by the forest staff at the edges of the jungles with a view to clear them of unwanted dry leaves that were the impediment in the way of fresh growth of grass and plants for the wild life and animals.

But now due to the negligence and ignorance of the forest staff n their vested squeezed intention to siphon of huge money that is delivered to them for maintaining the forests and planting of fresh trees for clean environment , these officials n employees allegedly put the jungles on fire with the help of jungle mafia who are illegally in league with them.

The massive Uttarakhand fire of 2016 that has completely devastated jungles of about 11 districts of Uttarakhand also speaks of the sorry state of affairs of the state government in not framing an adequate fool proof policy to dodge such huge jungle fires which had been erupting since time immemorial.

The environment ministry and the Forest department of the central government is to be equally blamed for this massive man made disaster. The fire that started on 23 rd February in ,2016 continued till 4 May and the state as well as the central government were mum on this pivotal issue having been ridiculously busy in destabilising each other through horse trading in Uttarakhand and trading charges on each other inside parliament . Uttarakhands 5 Lok Sabha MPs and two Rajya Sabha nominees then had no time to bring such a pivotal matter to the knowledge of the concerned authorities resulting in 8 precious deaths, colossal loss to our economy and immense harm to our wild life and jungles of central Himalayas.

Similarly, the massive fire thathas now started in the jungles of Pauri, Garhwal district needs to be dodged and curbed strngly and most effectively failing which it can further spread in the adjoining jungles creating havoc to the wild life and the environment of the hills as happened in 2016.

Moreover the impact forest fires are highly damaging for various reasons such as enhancing global warming, change in lande scape, affect on photosynthesis, loss ofvaluable timber resources, massive soil erosion affecting the productivity of soils and production, degradation of catchment areas, loss of bio diversity and extinction of lants and animals, loss of wild life habitats and extinction/ depletion of wild life, loss of natural regeneration and collosal loss of forest cover, ozone layer depletion and above all most importantly loss of the carbon sink resource and massive increase in the percentage of Carbondioxide in the environment. In addition it also leads to creation of multiple deseases thus resulting in detereorating health conditions including making the lives of villagers and tribals cumbersome who depends on fuel n timber to cook food and meeting their daily needs.