The Himalayan State may have been struggling hard to piece together threads of life in the aftermath of the devastating monsoon that inflicted a large scale damage to it, but the monsoon season significantly helped contain the wildfire this season in Uttarakhand.
Whereas 2823.89 hectare forest area was affected due to wildfire across the State in the year 2012 , interestingly only 377.29 hectare forest land was affected by this forest fire this year i.e. in 2013, as the figures provided by the State Forest department suggest.
More so, the interesting fact is that this rather a longer rainfall spell this year did not only help prevent a large scale damage to environment and wildlife by containing the wildfire as aforesaid figures suggest, but also restricted the total number of fire incidents to only 238 this year in 2013 as compared to that of previous year when a total 1,328 fire incidents occurred in different locations of the hill state, as the figures provided by the State forest department reflect.
Among certain other factors including human interventions, role of climate change as witnessed this monsoon season is one of the primary factors leading to less damage to the nature by the forest fire.
Changes in climatic conditions like heavy rainfall and that too for a longer period as we experienced this monsoon season, can be attributed as one of the major reasons behind less incidents of fire as well as less damage to the environment and flora and fauna by the wildfire, said K S Samant, Chief Conservator of Forest, the state forest department (legal and vigilance), while talking to The Pioneer in an exclusive interview.
Presence of humidity in the atmosphere due to rainfall comes in handy to contain the wildfire as we have seen this season, he added. It is worth mention here that keeping in view vulnerability of Uttarakhand forests to the wildfire mainly due to presence of pine
forests in different parts of it, the State forest department has already introduced many human interventions to prevent the wildfire during soaring temperature of summer like State of the art real time monitoring system, awareness programmes involving local people to name a few.
But as has been experienced in the past all the external factors alone have not proved to be suffice to control the forest fire. However, it is hoped that these human intervention may prove to be effective to take on the blaze of wildfire if awareness is created in the society about adverse impact of the wildfire.