Forest Research Institute Director Dr Savita stressed on the need of forests on mountain slopes to mitigate disasters especially landslides. Steps needed to be taken to check forest fires which have become a major threat to the forest wealth of the country. She stated this at the start of a five-day training programme on the role of forestry sector in disaster risk management organised by the institute’s Silviculture division in collaboration with National Institute of Disaster Management, New Delhi.
FRI Silviculture division head Kunal Satyarthi spoke about the training contents and of the speakers from different organisations. Invited speaker from NIDM, Dr AK Gupta opined that forest officials should also be engaged in mitigation of disasters through forestry activities in their areas. He also suggested FRI to organise such training programmes at block and village levels for which funds would be provided by NIDM. Seniof faculty member at NIDM, Dr AD Kaushik stressed on the need of multi-sector strategy for mitigating disasters in the country. It should be noted that the National Disaster Management Authority has classified forest fires, droughts, floods, cyclones, insects-pests and invasive species as some kind of disasters to forest composition.
About 50 per cent of the forest area is burnt annually due to forest fires in India. To sensitise the consequence of disasters on forests and how these disasters can be mitigated through management techniques, forest officers and scientists from different states of the country have been invited for five-day discussions for protection and management of forests in mitigation of disasters. This training at FRI will comprise topics like climate change and disasters, disaster risk management, forest epidemics for disaster management, landside mitigation practices, meteorological aspects and other issues which will be deliberated upon by speakers from FRI, National Institute of Hydrology, Roorkee, Metrological Department of Uttarakhand, Forest Survey of India, Indian Institute of Remote Sensing, Garhwal Central University, National Disaster Management Authority, New Delhi, ITBP and National Institute of Disaster Management, New Delhi.