Environment and Disaster Management › Protected areas and habitats

Forests, grasslands and mountain ecosystems

Forests, grasslands, deserts, islands and mountain ranges: fires, grasslands mistaken for wasteland, and the 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.

Foundation note: The India State of Forest Report: what the numbers mean

UPSC has asked

Prelims 2019: ranking States by percentage of forest cover to State area

Showing 1 of 3 articles, those that changed from 1 to 31 July 2026.Show all

Forest fires

Prelims and Mains

Forest fires in India are tracked through alerts that the Forest Survey of India (FSI) reads off satellite passes.

The Himalaya has two fire seasons with different causes, as the figure shows.
India relies on foreign satellites, which leave two windows a day unwatched.
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.
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.

Western Himalaya

Pre-monsoon heat
Pine needles on the forest floor

Eastern Himalaya

Dry air
Burning linked to shifting cultivation

From the Press Information Bureau release of 7 August 2026 on the committee's 412th report

What changed

7 Jul 2026
- Fire alerts in the 2026 season were 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.
Frontline, 7 Jul 2026: Fire alerts in 2026 were the second highest since 2012, and the season is now starting earlier and reaching forests that did not previously burn. (opens in a new tab)

Show history (1 other update)

7 Aug 2026
- The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Science and Technology, Environment, Forests and Climate Change found no study linking climate change to rising Himalayan forest fires.
- Its 412th report 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.
Mains: India treats fire as a disaster to be put out rather than as an ecological process to be managed.
PIB, 7 Aug 2026: Parliamentary committee report on Himalayan forest fires (opens in a new tab)

Also filed elsewhere

Aravalli High Powered Committee · on Courts, tribunals and environmental jurisprudence
The High Powered Committee was constituted by the Supreme Court in a suo motu case to examine the Aravalli hills across Delhi, Rajasthan, Haryana and Gujarat as a single unit rather than State by State.