Forest Fires News

“I have never seen this kind of a forest fire before. This year, the fire entered our village, and I could see that it was just 100 meters away from…

As Similipal National Park and Tiger Reserve in Odisha burned over the past month, the debate over whether ownership of the park should be in the hands of the forest…

The recent Dzukou valley fire, which was doused after two weeks, has raised an alert for several groups of people – local inhabitants, tourists, stakeholders, environmentalists and more. The 80-90…

Forest land amounting to 43 million hectares, more than twice the size of the state of Karnataka, was cleared across the tropics and subtropics between 2004 and 2017, largely for commercial…

Colourful and delicate, butterflies are not only beautiful creatures, but also play an essential role in the food chain as well as being indicators of the ecosystem. Of late, butterfly…

"Every blade of grass has its angel that bends over it and whispers, Grow, grow.”  These words from the Talmud, a Jewish religious text, welcome the visitors at Dwarson, a…

While India talks about the impacts of developmental projects on biodiversity, an exotic plant with pretty flowers has diligently carved its way to degrade its forests. This plant, Lantana camara,…

On March 25, a few hours after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a country-wide lockdown to tackle the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, forest authorities in Dewas, Madhya Pradesh arrested…

From covering 640,819 square kilometres (19.49 percent) of India’s total land area in 1987 to covering 712,249 sq. km.  (21.67 percent) of the country’s geographical area in 2019, India’s forest…

It’s the forest fire season and the officials at the Bandipur Tiger Reserve in Karnataka have stepped up the ante on fire preparedness. With fire watchers assigned to look out…

A recent article in Mongabay-India about how to deal with forest fires in India argues that fire suppression should be replaced by fire prevention with the help of local communities.…

The fires raging across Australia from September 2019 and the ones in California in 2018 have brought global attention to wildfires in the recent years. Around 6.3 million hectares of…

Nearly 25 percent (one fourth) of India’s total land area is now under forest and tree cover. However, there is still a long way to go - more than a…

Aerial images taken last month in the southern part of Indonesia’s Sumatra Island show wildfires burning through peat forests and producing clouds of toxic smoke. The fires are deliberately set…

In 2016, the year when a heatwave in India took over a hundred lives, fatalities caused by heat/sun stroke were the second highest cause of “accidental deaths due to forces…

This week's stories rolled into one. To receive a weekly email with a roundup of our stories, please sign-up to our newsletter. Upping the ante for disaster management in cyclone-prone…

When summer strengthens, it brings with it dry spells and the season of forest fires. Since January 2019, a number of fire incidents have been reported from Kerala. In the…

The western Indian Himalayas, spread across Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, have always been known for their pines, cedars and oaks. These trees are so typical to the…

Over 90 years after the enactment of the Indian Forest Act (IFA) 1927, a proposed amendment now plans to give more powers to the forest authorities, encourages large scale afforestation…

In the last week of February, Bandipur Tiger Reserve lost over 60 square kilometres of forest to a massive fire, despite the best efforts of hundreds of people who tried…