Goemkarponn desk
PANAJI: Chief Minister Pramod Sawant said that the final report of forest wildfires has already been sent to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s office.
“Final report of forest wildfires has already been sent to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s office. NDMA has already compiled the report,’ said CM Sawant.
The forest fires were first noticed 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 had also ranged through acres of cashew plantations when farmers were gearing up to harvest a bumper crop.
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 due to 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.
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