With summer round the corner and forest fire posing a threat, the Forest Department is on a mission to avert a disaster in Wayanad district.
It is carrying out a campaign in villages on the forest fringes to sensitise the people to the need to prevent forest fire.
As many as 125 nature enthusiasts from across southern India on Saturday participated in a 100-km bicycle rally in the villages highlighting the message of conservation. The rally was organised jointly by the Forest Department, Wildlife Conservation Society India Programme, and environmental groups.
“We organised an innovative programme to make the public, including villagers and tribesmen living on the fringes of forests, aware of the significance of forest conservation and the impact of forest fire,” Warden of the Wayanad Wildlife Sanctuary N.T. Sajan said.
He said natural forest fires were rare now and several such incidents were man-made.
Public participation
The department alone could not control such a disaster and help of villagers was imperative. Ensuring their participation in the endeavour was also important, he added.
Though hundreds of hectares of forestland had been destroyed in wildfires in the adjacent tiger reserves in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, no major incidents were reported in the forest areas of the district last year, thanks to the measures adopted by the sanctuary officials.
The rally covered most villages on the fringes of the Wayanad Wildlife Sanctuary and the North Wayanad and South Wayanad forest divisions. “As many as 15,000 brochures on preventing forest fires and the significance of forest conservation were distributed to the public during the campaign,” Arul Badusha of the Wildlife Conservation Society India Programme, who coordinated the drive, said.
North Wayanad Forest Divisional Officer K.C. Prasad flagged off the programme at the Tholpetty ecotourism centre in the morning. Receptions were accorded to the rally at 11 centres in the district.
The rally concluded at the Muthanga Ecotourism Centre in the evening. M.R. Dileep, First Class Judicial Magistrate, Sulthan Bathery, inaugurated the valedictory.
