By Subhojit Goswami
Forest fires have been raging in pine forests of Dharamshala for the last three days, causing a significant loss of tree cover. Although the exact extent of fire is not clearly known, at least 618 sites reportedly caught fire in this region. Strong winds in the region on Sunday morning further pushed the fire to other areas, including near Dharamshala cantonment.
Problem with pine
This is the time of the year when pine trees shed their leaves, covering large chunk of open land within forests. With summer temperature already hovering in mid-30s, the pine needles take hardly three to four hours to get completely dry. These heaps of needles become highly inflammable and easily catch fire. However, there is another facet to it: practice of waste burning by the communities living in the vicinity of these forests.
"In absence of a proper waste collection and disposal system, the communities find it convenient to burn their waste. Although they keep a watch and stand close to the burning garbage, embers often burst out to nearby forests, triggering a massive fire," says Dharmesh Kumar, Sub-divisional Magistrate, Dharamshala.
The forest department has been planting pine saplings in the region for the past few decades due to high survival rate of the tree. There are 27,910 hectares of pine forests in the Dharamsala circle, which comprises 20 per cent of the total forest area in that circle. However, these trees create problems for the forest department as well as the native farmers.
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