No active forest fires in Goa now but keeping a close watch, says minister Rane

The Goa forest fires review meeting was attended by senior officials from the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), Ministry of Home Affairs and the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change.

PANAJI: Goa forest minister Vishwajit Rane on Tuesday said forest fires in the state have been put out and there are no reports of any “active flames”.

Forest minister Vishwajit Rane said a total of 71 fire spots have been attended to and doused since March 5 (Twitter/visrane)

“We no longer have any active flames as of right now… To be safe, though, the extinguished fire locations are being closely watched to look for recurrence,” Rane said in a string of tweets on Tuesday after a review meeting on fires in Goa.

The meeting was attended by senior officials from the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), Ministry of Home Affairs and the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change.

Rane added that the NDMA has advised Goa’s forest department to assess the area affected by fires and take corrective measures at the earliest. “State Government will prepare a comprehensive Forest Fire Management Plan to prevent and manage forest fires,” he said.

The minister said a total of 71 fire spots have been attended to and doused since March 5 after fires broke out in the forests of the Mhadei wildlife sanctuary.

The forest fires were first noticed at a location in Satrem village of the Mhadei Wildlife Sanctuary nearly seven days ago. The wildfire soon spread to other locations in the sanctuary, while fires erupted simultaneously in several other sanctuaries, including the Mollem and Netravali wildlife sanctuaries.

The flames have reduced large tracts of Western Ghats forests, usually resistant to fires being tropical moist forests, to ashes. They have also ranged through acres of cashew plantations at a time when farmers were gearing up to harvest a bumper crop.

On Monday, there were eight active wildfires.

The Goa government has ordered a probe into the forest fires. Earlier this week, Rane said: “This is a man-lit fire. There seems to be no other explanation.” “We have discussed it a lot and the report will come.”

Across the country, there is a 115% increase in forest fires in the first 12 days of March on account of almost no rains in February and hotter-than-normal temperatures. Around 42,799 forest fires have been detected between March 1 and March 12, according to the satellite-based forest fire monitoring by the Forest Survey of India (FSI); the number is up from 19,929 last year.