Northeast region has highest tendency of forest fire in India, says MoEFCC

Our Reporter
Dimapur, Nov. 5 (EMN): Nearly 10% area of forest cover in India is under “extremely to very highly fire-prone zone” and the north-eastern region has the highest tendency of forest fire.
This was revealed in a study carried out by the Forest Survey of India (FSI) to identify fire-prone forest areas based on Geographic Information System (GIS) in the last 13 years, reported Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC).
“The states under North-Eastern region showed the highest tendency of forest fire as these states are falling under extremely to very highly forest fire zone. States like Mizoram, Tripura, Meghalaya and Manipur exhibited the highest forest fire probability in terms of its frequency of event occurrence,” said the report.
The ministry has released INR 3.11 crore under grants-in-aid as a final instalment to Central Pollution Control Board for the establishment of manual ambient air quality monitoring stations for monitoring three parameters SO2, NO2 and PM10 in Mizoram and Jammu & Kashmir, and for PM2.5 monitoring in the states of Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Puducherry, Sikkim and Tripura under “Assistance for Abatement of Pollution” scheme.
Financial assistance of INR 42 lakh has been provided to State Pollution Control Boards of Assam, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim and Tripura for procurement of laboratory instruments /equipment under the scheme, it was informed.
The MoEFCC, in its report for 2020-21, stated that an additional report on forest carbon and bamboo resources of Nagaland would be prepared from the data collected during the field inventory on forest resources following the request of the state’s forest department.
‘Forest type and density-wise forest carbon stock under different carbon pools and quality-wise bamboo resources in the state of Nagaland will be estimated under the project. The data processing work is complete and a draft report has been submitted but it is yet to be published,’ it stated.