Taming the wild forest fire
- Hueiyen Lanpao Editorial :: April 19, 2014 -

Forest wild fire at Kakching on April 18 2014 :: Pix - Hueiyen Lanpao

Around this time of the year when dry summer season is at its peak, to hear of reports on the destruction caused by wild forest fire in different parts of the globe is normal.

And, Manipur has been no exception to this problem of wild forest fire and its resultant destruction year after year. Within the current month itself, there have been at least four such incidents.

On April 12, 14 houses were razed to the ground and properties worth lakhs of rupees destroyed when wild fire from the nearby forest spread to two villages in Chandel district namely Laiching Khuman under Tengnoupal Police Station and Lamkang Khunyai village under Chandel Police Station.

Barely four days after this devastating incident, five houses and all the properties inside them were reduced to ashes when fire from the nearby forest spread to Mitong Rashankhur, a remote village inhabited by Moyon tribe, also in Chandel district on April 16.

In the latest incident, two farm houses have been reportedly gutted when forest fire from a nearby hill spread very close to the Community Health Centre at Kakching in Thoubal district on April 18.

Prior to these incidents, there was also report about two houses destroyed at K Zalenmoul village under Moreh Police Station in Chandel district when wild fire from nearby forest spread in the afternoon of March 30.

Even though forest fire is said to be as old as the forest itself, two main causes of this menace has been universally known.

First is the natural causes such as striking of the lightning which set trees on fire or the combination of high atmospheric temperature and dryness (low humidity) that offer favourable circumstances for a fire to ignite even from a friction between two bamboo plants while the second is the man-made causes such as clearing of forest areas for cultivation purposes or simply leaving an attended naked flame including throwing around burning buds of cigarette, bidi, etc carelessly in forest area.

Even though naturally caused forest fire is common in other parts of the world, in India about 90 percent of incident of forest fires are said to be created by humans.

And, this is true for most cases of forest fires in Manipur, if not all. While this obviously calls for mass awareness among the people to dissuade them from igniting fire in the forest areas needlessly, the officials of the Forest Department, who are entrusted with the task of protecting the forest, also need to remain on their toes always especially during the dry season.

If this is asking too much from the same officials who prefer to remain their eyes shut tightly even to indiscriminate felling down of trees inside the reserved forest areas, at least let them put up some hoardings highlighting the contents of the Acts related to protection of forest and punishments that could be given to the offenders.

Keeping aside high sounding concepts like Joint Forest Management which has never worked out in Manipur, this simple arrangement could help in the taming the wild forest fire at least to some extent.