Wildland fires in India
Summary of a workshop held in Madurai, February 19-22, 2007.
India has had a policy of fire suppression that dates back to the first formal articulation of forest
policy in 1927. Yet, even today, almost a century later, fire continues to be an annual
phenomenon in almost all Indian forests. This obvious contradiction between fire policy and fire
reality raises a number of questions regarding the drivers of fire, the role that fire plays in
ecological processes, the extent of fires in India, and the existing fire policy. For instance,
- Are fire occurrences natural or anthropogenic?
- Are fires beneficial or detrimental in their effect on ecosystems and on human
society?
- What proportion of forests burn annually?
- Are some ecosystem types more prone to fire than others?
- Is our century-old fire policy still relevant in today’s altered landscape?
It was issues such as these that motivated the organization of a workshop on forest fire in India,
which was held in February of this year. The workshop was jointly organized by Joachim
Schmerbeck of the Institute of Silviculture, University of Freiburg, and Ankila Hiremath of the
Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), in collaboration with the
Foundation for Ecological Security (FES) and the Evergreen Trust.
The workshop drew participants from different parts of India as well as from Indonesia,
Germany, Switzerland, and the US. Participants represented a diversity of backgrounds –
scientists and social scientists, managers and practitioners. Unfortunately, representatives of
neither the Indian Ministry of Environment and Forests, nor the National Remote Sensing
Agency were able to attend the workshop, though both agencies have expressed their interest in
being associated with future initiatives resulting from the workshop.
The opening day of the workshop featured a series of presentations on fire in Indian
ecosystems, and on methodological approaches that could be brought to bear in an integrated
study of fire. Joachim Schmerbeck and Ankila Hiremath provided an introduction to the ideas
underlying the workshop. Schmerbeck presented a case study of Kadavakurichi Reserve Forest
in Tamil Nadu, using it to highlight the reasons that people burn, and also the effect that repeated
fires can have on vegetation structure. He drew linkages between people’s use of fire, the goods
and services people obtain from ecosystems, and vegetation dynamics, all of which are affected
by the socio-economic setting and the legal and administrative context. Hiremath discussed the
extent of fires in India and Indian fire policy, both now and in the past. She went on to talk about
the possibility of fires as a natural factor in structuring ecosystems over historical and
evolutionary time, and the evidence – though scant – for the ecological role of fires in Indian
ecosystems. She also talked about the diverse objectives that may underlie fire management
(e.g., habitat maintenance and conservation of biodiversity, or livelihood enhancement and
supply of ecosystem goods and services), and highlighted the kinds of information required for
integrated fire-management at the landscape level.
The introductory presentations were followed by an overview of fire ecology in the
tropics by Daniel Kraus of the Global Fire Monitoring Center, University of Freiburg. Kraus
described the commonly accepted classification of natural systems into fire sensitive, fire
dependent, and fire independent ecosystems. He also discussed the effect of altered fire regimes,
either due to habitat fragmentation, which can alter fire character, or due to the excessive use of
fire in association with demographic and land-use changes. He raised the questions of whether
contemporary fires – with short return intervals – are beneficial or damaging, whether we need to
manage natural and human-caused wildfires, and whether we need to foster the application of
prescribed burning to maintain productivity and functioning of ecosystems in the seasonal
tropics.
Kraus’s presentation was followed by a couple of
case studies from India. Mahesh Sankaran, of the
University of Leeds, talked about his work in the Kalakad
Mundanturai Tiger Reserve (KMTR), in South India,
where large tracts of grassland are dominated by the
unpalatable tall grass, Cymbopogon fluxuosus. Other
studies have shown the role of fire in improving forage
availability for grazing herbivores. In KMTR, on the
other hand, Cymbopogon communities are stable to perturbation by fire. The grass is grazed
immediately following fire, but not thereafter, and Cymbopogon rapidly re-attains competitive
dominance. His findings indicate that prescribed burning, alone, is not an effective means of
improving forage availability for herbivores, and would need to be coupled with increased
herbivore stocking densities. Girish Negi, of the G B Pant Institute for Himalayan Environment
and Development, presented a brief overview of fire prevalence in the Himalayas, and especially,
in fire-prone Chir pine forests. He touched upon what is known of the causes and consequences
of such fires, and also highlighted the need for more information.
Moving away from the ecological role of fires to the socio-cultural and socioeconomic
drivers of fire, Tim Waring, of the University of California at Davis, presented his ideas for
studying the interaction between ecological and social factors in determining the way people use
fire. His proposed study is an attempt to tease apart the relative contributions of social factors
and individual-level environmental optimization in determining the way in which people use fire
in grassland management in the Palni Hills in southern India. He hopes his findings will provide
insights into the prevalence, importance, and drivers of the anthropogenic fire regime in the Palni
Hills. Durgadas Mukhopadhyay, of the Sparta Institute of Social Science, talked about the
ubiquity of fire in Indian mythology, rituals, and lifestyles. He cited a number of different
examples in which Agni, or fire, is invoked. He also talked about the ritual symbolism associated
with fire – that of both end and beginning, of destruction and regeneration.
The second set of presentations focused on methodological issues. Klaus Seeland, of the
ETH Zurich, talked about the importance of culture in any study of fire. He talked about the
cultural notion of space, stressing that the way each culture thinks about nature, or space, is a
unique reflection of that particular culture. Thus, nature and culture together make up an
inseparable ‘life-world,’ the advantage of such an approach being that its findings reveal
themselves as relevant topics, and, thus the ultimate focus of research.
Imam Basuki, of the Center for International Forest Research (CIFOR) in Indonesia,
presented the Multidisciplinary Landscape Assessment (MLA) approach that was developed by
CIFOR to generate information on local people’s perspective of their environment for decision
makers. He described the methods involved in MLA, and provided several examples of
situations in which it has been applied, ending with suggestions for how the MLA approach may
be used for the study of fire and fire management.
Finally, Robert Chandran, of ATREE, talked about the potential role of modelling in the
study of fire. He underlined the benefits of a landscape-level approach, stressing that societal or
individual decisions regarding one place invariably influence other parts of the landscape, and
that a landscape scale approach lends itself to reconciling various management objectives. He
also reviewed various analytical models that have been used to study land use dynamics.
The participants then spent the next couple of
days visiting two distinctly different fire-affected
landscapes in the vicinity of Madurai. The first visit was
to the Kadavakurichi Reserve Forest, a degraded dry
forest that is a source of fodder and fuelwood for 19
villages that surround it. The area burns frequently, and
the group was able to see both the dominant scrub
vegetation of the area (presumably a result of fire,
grazing and cutting) and a distinctly different pocket of evergreen vegetation of a small temple
forest in a rocky, mesic depression. The second visit was to the Sirumalai Hills, also a reserve
forest, where the group visited watersheds under different land uses, both historical and
contemporary. The visit provided an opportunity to discuss the possible effects of varying fire
histories on present-day vegetation structure and composition. In addition to the two field trips,
there was also a ‘virtual’ field trip to the Palni Hills, led by Jean Pouyet, of II Banyans,
Auroville. Pouyet presented the geological and ecological history of the Palni Hills. He also
talked about his thoughts on the factors that have shaped the vegetation of the area, based on his
reading and observations of historical and present-day land use.
The fourth and final day was spent discussing
ways in which the process begun in the workshop could
be carried forward. The structured and constructive daylong
discussion was chaired by Ravi Chellam, of
ATREE. All participants agreed that the issue of wildland
fires in India was important, both from the perspective of
habitat conservation and in the context of sustainable
management of ecosystem services from natural
ecosystems. The group was agreed that there was need for a long-term research initiative that
could generate an information base on wildland fires in India, with specific aims as follows.
- To understand the environmental, socio-cultural, and economic drivers of wild land fires; and
- To assess the role of fires in ecosystem processes and in the supply of ecosystem services in
different biogeographic zones of India
There was agreement that such an initiative would have to be undertaken at a national level, and
that it would require the involvement of governmental and non-governmental agencies and civil
society at the local, regional, and national level. The expected outcomes of such an initiative
include the generation of a database on wildland fires
(their frequency and extent, drivers, and effects);
creation of materials for education and training; and
initiation of a policy discussion on wildland fires. The
workshop ended with the formation of a steering
committee, which is charged with the responsibility
of seeking partners and funds. We aim to have a draft
proposal prepared by July 2007, and hope that the
proposed initiative can begin in the first quarter of
2008.
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