Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Forest Fire in Nilgiri Biosphere Area


Nilgiri Biosphere Area occurs at the Tri Junction spot of Kerala-Tamilnadu-Karnataka, the south Indian states. Forest fires of varying intensity have occurred in the protected areas of Nilgiri biosphere Reserve over the past 8 days. The fires have caused some damage in wild life sanctuaries of Bandipur, Nagarhole National Park in karnataka, Wayanad Sanctuary in Kerala and Mudhumalai Sanctuary in Tamilnadu during the second week of February.

The Forest ministers of south-Indian states held a conference to discuss the ways to preserve the Biosphere area. In the meeting it was decided that the three south Indian states must act together in sorting out this issue in a smooth manner. Almost all forest fires are caused by humans as they enter the protected areas illegally. Fire Maps are supplied as a part of the Fire information for Resource Management System in order to enable managers of protected areas to react to fires instantly. According to reports of 2006, the National Forest commission pointed out that Evergreen forests are subjected to fire on large scale and the frequency of forest fires are increasing rapidly.

Forest fires often linked to excessive livestock grazing and careless human behavior destroy biodiversity. Fragmentation of wild life habitats arising from loss of forest connectivity is a serious limiting factor for wild life and this type of fragmentation are mostly caused by Big Fires in the forest reserve areas. Also forest fires cause decline in species diversity, seedling and sapling density and tree densities. This could have a major impact on our ecosystem and we must look forward to protect forests on a long term basis for a healthy environment all round thee world.

4 comments:

introspection said...

Hi there,
Very informative post. I had no idea Nilgiri areas had fir recently. In fact my thinking was that Nilgiris were cool mountains. Perhaps this is a different area. thanks for the info, and thanks for visiting "recessionHand" and commenting.
cheers..! keep writing.

Marja said...

Thanks for visiting my blog. It never occurred to me that these things happen in your country. We
recently had a lot of coverage on TV of the Australien bushfires. Some of them were started by arsenists as well. Horrible!
Take care, marja

Anonymous said...

really informative post.. forests must be preserved..

Anonymous said...

Every country must take necessary steps to avoid forest fire anymore as it is really very horrible.