FOREST FIRES

Key Findings:

• About 21.4% of forest cover in India is prone to fires, with forests in the north-eastern region and central India being the most vulnerable.
  
  
• Extremely fire prone areas account for 3.89% of total forest cover, very highly fire prone areas account for 6.01% and highly fire prone areas for 11.50%. Together, the three categories come to 21.40 % of forest cover.
  
  
• Central Indian States also recorded a high number of forest fire alerts, with Madhya Pradesh accounting for 2,723 alerts; Maharashtra 2,516; Odisha 2,213 and Chattisgarh 1,008 alerts between November 2018 to June 2019. 
  
  

Reasons:

• The reasons for fires here are manmade, particularly in cases where people visit forests and leave burning bidis, cigarette stubs or other inflammable materials.
  
  
• In cases of natural reasons, the scientist pointed to thunderstorms as the most likely cause.
  
  
• One of the major reasons for forest fires in the north-east is slash-and-burn cultivation, commonly called jhoom or jhum cultivation. The fires happen between the months of January and March.