Title: Fighting forest fires
(How information on a fire reaches the authorities and the
ways in which firefighting can be improved)
ü The
recent wildfire tragedy in Theni in Tamil Nadu, in which 20
trekkers lost their lives, once again brings into focus forest fires in
India.
ü Over
the past few years, we have realised that these fires are not spontaneous;
human beings set off fires.
ü This
tragedy raises several other issues of
approaches in fighting fires and ways of mitigating damage.
Relaying information
ü When
a fire anywhere in the world is detected by NASA’s MODIS (Moderate
Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) and VIIRS (Visible Infrared
Imaging Radiometer Suite) satellites, the Forest Survey of India
(FSI) analyses the data by overlaying the digitised boundaries of forest areas
to pinpoint the location to the exact forest compartment.
ü The
FSI relays news of the fire to the concerned State, so that the Divisional
Forest Officer (DFO) in charge of the forest where the fire is raging
is informed.
Four approaches
ü The
first is what may be called technological, where helicopters
or ground-based personnel spray fire retardant chemicals, or pump water to
fight the blaze. These are expensive methods and make sense when one is
protecting a human community, but are usually not practised in India.
ü The
second is to contain the fire in compartments bordered by natural
barriers such as streams, roads and fire lines along hillsides or across
plains.
ü A
fire line is a line through a forest which has been cleared of all
vegetation. The width depends on the type of forest being protected. Once
the blaze has burnt out all combustibles in the affected compartment,
it fizzles out and the neighbouring compartments are saved.
ü The
third is to set a counter fire, so that when a fire is
unapproachable for humans, a line is cleared of combustibles and manned.
ü One
waits until the wildfire is near enough to be sucking oxygen
towards it, and then all the people manning the line set fire to the line
simultaneously. The counter fire rushes towards the wildfire, leaving a stretch
of burnt ground. As soon as the two fires meet, the blaze is extinguished.
ü The
fourth approach, which is the most practical and most widely
used, is to have enough people with leafy green boughs to beat
the fire out. This is practised in combination with fire lines
and counter fires.
Mitigating damage
ü The
actual number of Forest Department personnel that are sent to put out
fires are woefully inadequate. The fact that they manage to achieve
some control speaks for their enthusiasm.
ü A
fire often has a front of several kilometres and a few jeeps full of men
are entirely inadequate to fight such a blaze.
ü We
need to vastly increase the number of firefighters as well as
equip them properly with drinking water bottles, back-up supplies of
food and water, proper shoes or boots, rakes, spades and other
implements, light, rechargeable torches, and so on.
ü They
could also be paid better. Seasonal labour could be contracted
during the fire season. With adequate training, they would serve to fill
gaps along the line. Local villagers would be the best resource.
ü The
constraint(limit) is funds. Vast amounts of funds are used for frivolous
purposes like ‘planting forests’. In practice, they are mostly diverted
to corrupt officials and political parties. After more than half a century
of planting forests there is little to show for the funds spent on this
activity.
ü More
Forest Department field staff could be hired to put out fires during
the fire season and to patrol the forests during other times. This is the only
way to prevent accidents such as the Theni tragedy.
Title:
A legacy of greed
ü (How
science is stepping in to save the northern white rhino from extinction)
ü The
last male northern white rhinoceros, Sudan, died on March 19,
aged 45, at Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya, where he spent the
last nine years under the watch of a 24-hour armed guard. There was a time when
northern white rhinos could be found in southern Chad, the Central
African Republic, southwestern Sudan, northwestern Uganda, and the Democratic
Republic of the Congo.
ü In
1960, more than 2,000 were remaining, according to a World
Wildlife Fund report. The number shrank to 15 in 1984 as they
were hunted for their horns, an ingredient in traditional Vietnamese
medicine.
ü Only
two northern white rhinos remain: Sudan’s daughter Najin and
granddaughter Fatu, neither of whom will be able to carry a pregnancy
to term.
ü Where
traditional conservation methods failed to save this subspecies, science is
stepping in. From the sperm of four northern white rhino bulls and
living cells collected from 13 northern white rhinos before they
died, researchers from Germany, the U.S., Kenya, Japan, Australia, Austria and
the Czech Republic are planning a two-pronged approach – in vitro
fertilisation and stem cell technology to resurrect (restore
to life) the subspecies.
ü From
Berlin, a team of scientists from Leibniz-IZW will go to Kenya in May to extract
eggs from Najin and Fatu. In Cremona, Italy, the eggs will be fertilised
with the sperm of northern white rhino bulls. Sudan’s sperm is not
viable due to lack of genetic distance. Once the eggs are fertilised, they will
need surrogate mothers and the closest living relatives, are the
southern white rhinos.
ü However,
one rhino will not resurrect a species or subspecies. Genetic
diversity is the key, and this is where the expertise of Katsuhiko Hayashi,
a reproductive biologist at Kyushu University in Fukuoka, who produced baby
mice from mouse skin cells, comes in.
ü Mr.
Hayashi’s team will attempt to replicate this with northern
white rhino cells. The living cell material of 13 northern white rhinos
are stored in laboratories in Germany, the U.S. and Kenya.
ü The
aim is to take the cells from existing samples and develop them back into
embryo stem cells. After reprogramming, the stem cells can form
one cell which can grow into a sperm, and another
into an egg.
ü The
fertilised egg will be transferred to the surrogate mother. Mr.
Seet estimates that over the next four years alone, researchers will need at
least €5 million to keep the project going. It is a hefty price
to pay for our greed.
