Forest fires are a growing challenge facing not just India but nations across the world. A vigorous and carefully laid-out approach is needed to contain their prevalence
The Minister of State in the Union Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC), Babul Supriyo, while replying to a question in the Rajya Sabha on February 3, 2020, said that forest fires affected 93,273 hectares in India in 2019. His statement once again underlined the extent of destruction that forest fires cause in the country, which loses Rs 1,176 crore a year to these disasters. Worse, their incidence is increasing. According to Kiran Pande in an article in the Down To Earth magazine (February 27, 2019), these increased by 125 per cent between 2015 and 2017. Their number shot up from 4,225 to 14,107 between November 2018 and February 2019.
Forest fires devastate large tracts in many States, including Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala in the south, and Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh in the north and several others in the Northeast. These, according to Pande’s article, accounted for 209 out of the 558 fires in India between January 1 and February 26, 2019. This is worrisome. In a wider panorama, India alone does not suffer from forest fires. Australia, Brazil, the US and Canada were among other countries affected last year. Australia, where these continued to burn into this year, has clearly been the worst sufferer. As of January 12, 11 million hectares were burnt, 2,200 homes destroyed and 29 people killed. At least a billion animals and birds are estimated to have perished so far. The actual number may turn out to be even higher. The estimates did not take into account bats, frogs and invertebrates like insects, worms and spiders. The number may reach trillions if these are counted.
Species that have been particularly affected include the long-footed potoroo, a marsupial of the kangaroo family, the black-tailed antechinus and the silver-headed antechinus. According to estimates, over 80,000 koalas have been lost. The vulnerable Richmond birdwing butterfly (Ornithoptera richmondia) and many species of peacock spiders are among those that might have been badly impacted. Many threatened and vulnerable species have had their habitats destroyed. These include the glossy back-cockatoo, Kangaroo Island dunnart, Hastings River mouse, regent honey-eater, Blue Mountain water skink, bush-tailed rock wallaby, southern corroboree frog, quokkas, western ground parrot, northern eastern bristlebird and the greater glider.
Loss or serious reduction of their habitats may lead to the extinction of species, particularly endangered ones, which have adapted themselves to specific eco-systems and come to depend on particular types of vegetation or pollinators. Australia, it is feared, may not recover anything like the diverse wildlife population it had before the latest round of fires started. Worse, many of the potentially lost species are found only in Australia and become extinct worldwide. Besides, the forest-related segment of the economy has been hit. For example, the species of bees used by the bee-keeping industry, located on the eastern coast, have been killed or had their habitats destroyed, seriously affecting the industry’s future.
Perhaps no other country has suffered as much from forest fires as Australia. In the US, California is perhaps the State that suffers most on an increasing gradient. Things were, doubtless, better in 2019 than in 2018. In late October last year, however, forest fires forced 200,000 people to leave their homes and led to the declaration of an emergency. The period from January 1 to November 22, 2019, witnessed 46,706 wildfires compared with 52,080 in the corresponding period in 2018. About 4.6 million acres perished in the fire in the 2019 period, compared with 8.5 million acres in 2018. Towns, property and houses have been destroyed and people killed.
It is a different story in Brazil. The Amazon rain forests in the country, the largest of their kind in the world, play a critical role in the fight against climate change because of the vast amounts of planet-warming carbon dioxide it absorbs. Unfortunately, the number of fires rose from 68,345 in 2018 to 89,178 in 2019, an increase of 30.5 per cent, causing global concern.
Roughly 8,000 forest fires occur each year in Canada, burning, on an average, 2.5 million hectares a year. Densely-forested areas across much of the country are vulnerable and fires are known to have devastated towns, buildings and infrastructure besides killing people.
Forest fires are bound to increase in number, intensity and spread as climate change gathers further momentum. The contribution of climate change becomes clear on recalling that across the whole of Australia, 2019 was the hottest and driest year ever. It witnessed the continuation of drought that had hit the country in 2018. It became particularly hot towards the end of 2019, creating dry conditions in which a lightning strike could start a major conflagration. In Canada, where climate change has been cited as a cause, 45 per cent of all forest fires, accounting for 81 per cent of the total area affected, are started by lighting strikes. The debate over the causes of the California fires has also pointed to climate change as an important cause.
Human activity has also accounted for a lot. According to India’s State of Forest Report 2017, people set fire to forests for, among other reasons, clearing areas for shifting cultivation, non-timber forest produce collection and for hunting/poaching purposes. Another reason is making room for growing towns and villages. Humans are responsible for 90 per cent of forest fires in the US, according to the latter’s Department of Interior. Campfires left burning, the burning of debris, downed power lines, unextinguished cigarettes and deliberate incendiarism are among the causes. In Australia, the New South Wales police have charged at least 24 people with deliberately starting bush fires and 183 people of offences relating to the fires since November 2019. In Brazil, farmers and ranchers have been setting large tracts of the Amazon rain forests aflame while the Government is accused of being either indifferent or not encouraging enough.
Of course, this cannot be said of all Governments. The State Government of California has been active in combating forest fires. The Australian Government has been accused of waking up too late. Nevertheless, it has sprung to action and announced, among other steps, $50 million to rescue and protect wildlife affected by the fires. Unfortunately, nearly 24 per cent of the meagre fund of Rs 50 crore awarded for forest fire prevention were not spent in India during the last two financial years. We need a more vigorous and carefully laid-out approach to containing forest fires.
(The writer is Consultant Editor, The Pioneer, and an author)
