Recurring incidents of forest fires across Bengal during spring, mostly caused by people, has made senior officials of state forest department plan joint activities with the administration of districts and local panchayats concerned to prevent them.

A senior forester, underlining the gravity of the situation, said: “In fact, in the past 24 hours, that is, from Sunday to 10am today (Monday), as many as 84 wildfires have been reported in the forests of Bengal. It is a matter of grave concern.”

According to him, around half of these incidents have been reported in the reserve forest areas of Jalpaiguri, Alipurduar, Kalimpong and Darjeeling districts. The rest have been reported in the forests of Bankura, Purulia, Jhargram and in both Midnapore districts

In most cases, wildfires are human-induced, foresters said.

Some people, who take their cattle to the reserve forests for grazing, set fire to dry leaves and foliage with the anticipation that it would help in faster growth of vegetation.

Some who poach smaller animals set fire to the vegetation to catch easy prey.

“But what these people do not understand is that such fires affect the ecology and food chain of a forest because insects, birds, snakes and other reptiles die in the blaze. Also, if the fire starts spreading across a larger area, there is always a chance that wild animals from the forest will stray into the neighbouring human habitats,” said Ujjwal Ghosh, the additional principal chief conservator of forests (north Bengal).

These fires also lead to air pollution and over the past one week, it has been found that places like Siliguri and surroundings have been engulfed in a thick cover of smoke during the evening hours.

In the past few days, the average AQI (Air Quality Index) of Siliguri was above 200, which is deemed serious enough to cause breathing discomfort.

Recent wildfires reported in some adjoining forests of the city led to this rise in AQI, said sources.

Foresters patrol the fringes of Gorumara National Park to prevent wildfires.

Officials of the forest department said once a wildfire is reported, they send their teams to the location who try to arrest the fire by using water sprays or sometimes, cut down the fire line by clearing the foliage.

“However, we do not have adequate infrastructure and manpower to keep round-the-clock vigil on all the forest patches to prevent people from setting fire to the foliage. That is why we need the help of the administration and local panchayats. We can work together to stop such fires, engage people as watchers so that they can inform us and simultaneously make people aware of the harm such fires cause to biodiversity and health as a whole,” said a forester.

The department, he said, is yet to make an assessment about the total forest area affected by fires reported in the past one week.

“There is a firefighting cell at the state level but considering the frequency of these wildfires, we need our own firefighting squad at important locations,” said Ghosh.