Cigarette butts thrown carelessly on forest roads have devastated around 60 hectares of lush forest in Kerala during February and March, the wild-fire season in the state.
According to the data of State Wildlife Department, around four per cent of the forest loss during the period was because of such carelessness.
Apart from cigarettes, lightning, discharge from electric lines, spreading of fire due to careless handling of fire and intentional fire have also caused fire largely across forests
in the state, the data says.
"Cigarette butts caused fire mainly in places near roads in 'kooppu' (place for taking woods from forests using elephants), the in-roads which are used by both tribal and non-tribal people. Match boxes and cigarette packets have been recovered many times from such roads," Chief Conservator of Forest, K J Varghese said.
Many people who went to forest to collect wood, honey or cattle grass would throw away cigarettes without pre-thinking that it could cause a huge fire, he said, adding that such
people caused a loss of around 27 hectare in the present season alone.
This happened despite the wildlife department taking precautionary measures to check the spread of forest fire this year, in consideration of the scorching heat wave and lack of summer showers.
'Vana Samrakshana Samities' and Eco evelopment
Committees had jointly executed various methods in this regard.
According to the Forest Survey of India (FSI), 1,324.59 hectares of forest land has been destroyed in wildfire of which 751.05 hectares was lost in April alone.
In the period between December 2009 and May 2010, 106 fire incidents have been reported across various forests of Kerala, the data says.