Environment › Protected areas and habitats
Forests, grasslands and mountain ecosystems
Forests, grasslands, deserts, islands and mountain ranges as ecosystems: how forest cover is measured, forest fires, grasslands mistaken for wasteland, and the ecological protection of the Western Ghats, the Aravalli and the Himalaya. Prelims has ranked States by forest cover and asked what the Gadgil and Kasturirangan reports proposed for the Western Ghats.
UPSC has asked
- Prelims 2019: ranking States by percentage of forest cover to State area
Showing 1 of 3 subjects, those that changed from 1 to 15 July 2026.Show all
Forest fires
Copy link to Forest firesPrelims and Mains
The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Science and Technology, Environment, Forests and Climate Change, in its 412th report, found no study linking climate change to rising Himalayan forest fires, and what the range does have is two fire seasons with different causes.
- Forest fire alerts in India come from the Forest Survey of India (FSI), read off satellite passes.
- India relies on foreign satellites, which leave two windows a day unwatched.
- The committee asked for an Indian geostationary satellite instead of the passes now relied on.
- Only about 12.5 per cent of FSI alerts in Uttarakhand were real fires, which risks alert fatigue.
- In dry forests and savannas periodic low intensity fire is part of the natural cycle, so suppressing every fire lets fuel build up and makes later fires larger.
- Odisha and the north eastern States are the most fire affected over the long term.
- The spread of chir pine into former mixed oak forest in Uttarakhand adds a thick layer of needles that is both fuel and a reason villagers burn.
Western Himalaya
- Pre-monsoon heat
- Pine needles on the forest floor
Eastern Himalaya
- Dry air
- Burning linked to shifting cultivation
What changed
7 Aug 2026
PIB, 7 Aug 2026: Parliamentary committee report on Himalayan forest fires (opens in a new tab)
24 Jul 2026Update
- The Supreme Court set aside a 2016 Uttarakhand High Court order on forest fires and sent the matter back, holding that fire needs constant monitoring that a High Court is better placed to give.
Mains: India treats fire as a disaster to be put out rather than as an ecological process to be managed.
7 Jul 2026Update
- India recorded 5,25,627 fire alerts in the 2026 season, the second highest since 2012, and activity in the first two months ran more than 80 per cent above the previous decade's average.
- Uttarakhand's season, which once began in mid March, now produces fires as early as December.