In the first week of October 2018, as the southwest monsoon retreated from south Karnataka, the Bandipur Tiger Reserve, located 80 km south of Mysuru, was a sight to behold. Nature lovers flocked to take in its endless vistas of hillocks draped in a canopy of green.
The Bandipur Tiger Reserve is flanked by the Wayanad Wildlife Sanctuary in Kerala and the Mudumalai Tiger Reserve in Tamil Nadu. It is home to nearly 570 tigers, according to the ‘Status of Tigers in India, 2014’ report by the National Tiger Conservation Authority. These tigers share the forest with elephants, dholes, leopards and other mammals, making the tiger reserve an ecological hotspot.
But this idyll began to change by the end of December. When the northeast monsoon failed, it set alarm bells ringing in the Forest Department. Ambadi Madhav, then Field Director of the Bandipur Tiger Reserve, began to worry. “The forest looks luxurious, but it could become an inferno this summer. The abundance of leaf litter and dry shrubs provides an ideal condition for wildfire,” he said in January. His staff raced against time to clear the dry vegetation through controlled burning in different parts of the forest along what is known as the fire line. A standard practice in all national parks and wildlife sanctuaries across the country, this reduces the amount of combustible material in the forest and minimises the intensity of the fire in case of an outbreak.
The first major fire was reported around noon on February 21, at Bandipur’s Kundukere range. It was brought under control within hours. But there were sporadic incidents of fire on the night of February 22 as well at Melukamanahalli, after which NGOs and volunteers were roped in to assist the field staff. The severity of the fire incidents increased on February 23. Thanks to windy weather, the conflagration raged on for two days. The forest authorities then asked for Indian Air Force choppers, which were pressed into service on February 25. With help from the choppers, the wildfire was finally contained on February 26.
Soumya, a field staff stationed at the Melukamanahalli forest post, recalls the wildfire with a shudder. “A huge wall of fire blazed through the dry vegetation. Withering bamboo stumps exploded and shot up in the air, spreading the flame further. By the time we managed to contain the fire in one patch of the forest, it had spread to other parts.” By February 24, the leaping flames had spread from Melukamanahalli to the GS Betta range, reducing a vast swathe of the forest to ashes. GS Betta, which draws hundreds of tourists during weekends, is prefixed with the moniker ‘Himavad’, an allusion to the cloud and mist that envelops the landscape. But it was fire and smoke that greeted the firefighters and volunteers who approached it in the last week of February.
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