BEYOND FIRE SUPPRESSION
BUILDING WILDFIRE RESILIENCE IN THE INDIAN HIMALAYAS
BY AMIT KUMAR VERMA
Each spring, smoke rising above the Himalayan foothills signals the return of a familiar emergency. Forest departments mobilize crews, communities protect homes and grazing areas, and public attention turns briefly toward fire. Once the monsoon arrives, however, the urgency often fades. This seasonal cycle has encouraged a response system built primarily around detection and suppression. Those functions remain essential, but they are no longer enough.
Climate change is intensifying this challenge. Warmer conditions, irregular precipitation and longer dry periods can extend the window during which litter and vegetation are dry enough to burn. At the same time, road access, tourism, grazing, biomass collection and other human activities create numerous opportunities for ignition. The resulting fire risk is shaped by the interaction of climate, fuels and people. Acting only after ignition addresses just one part of the problem.
The challenge is particularly complex where forests, villages, roads and livelihood activities occur within the same landscape. Fire-management decisions must therefore consider not only vegetation and weather but also local dependence on forest resources, access for firefighting crews and the capacity of institutions to maintain preventive measures. These conditions make the Indian Himalayas an important setting for integrated approaches that connect scientific risk assessment with practical field action and community preparedness.
The Indian Himalayan foothills form a highly diverse transition from the low-elevation Shiwalik ranges to the middle Himalayas; they combine steep and dissected terrain, highly variable weather, scattered settlements, subtropical broad-leaved forests and extensive chir pine (Pinus roxburghii) landscapes that support water security, biodiversity, fodder, fuelwood and local livelihoods. The wider Indian Himalayan Region covers approximately 53.3 million hectares (131.7 million acres) – about one-sixth of India’s geographical area – and extends from these foothills to temperate broad-leaved and conifer forests, alpine landscapes and the cold trans-Himalaya.
Fire activity is concentrated mainly at lower and middle elevations during the dry pre-monsoon season. Data reported by the Forest Survey of India (FSI) in the India State of Forest Report (ISFR) show that five Himalayan states and Union Territories collectively recorded 106,067 Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (SNPP-VIIRS) forest-fire detections during the five fire seasons from 2019-2020 to 2023-2024. 2023-2024, of which 37,152 were in 2023-2024 alone. The figures represent satellite detections rather than an equivalent number of individually verified wildfire events.
Himalayan forest fires are predominantly small, patchy and fast-moving surface fires that spread through dry pine needles, leaf litter, grasses and understory vegetation; they are generally of low to moderate intensity, although strong winds, steep slopes, prolonged drought and heavy fuel accumulation can produce rapidly spreading, higher-intensity events. Ground fires and large, stand-replacing crown fires are comparatively uncommon. Fire in this landscape is therefore more than an operational problem: it is an ecological and social risk that develops long before ignition and continues well after the flames are extinguished.
FROM RESPONSE TO RESILIENCE
Wildfire resilience does not mean eliminating fire from every forest. Fire plays different ecological roles across Himalayan vegetation types, and no single management prescription can be applied equally to subtropical pine forests, moist broad-leaved forests and high-elevation ecosystems. Resilience means reducing the likelihood that fire will become destructive, preparing institutions and communities to respond safely, and enabling affected landscapes to recover without creating new vulnerabilities.
Building resilience requires a year-round cycle: assessing risk, reducing hazardous fuels in priority locations, preparing crews and communities, detecting and responding to fires rapidly, evaluating their impacts, restoring affected sites and incorporating lessons into future planning. Suppression remains an essential part of this cycle, but it should not be its sole organizing principle.
MANAGE FUELS STRATEGICALLY
The accumulation of dry litter and understory biomass can increase fire intensity and make access difficult. In chir landscapes, fallen dry needles – locally known as pirul – are often treated as the most visible component of the fire problem. Yet complete litter removal is neither practical nor ecologically desirable. Forest litter protects the soil, conserves moisture, reduces erosion and contributes to nutrient cycling.
A better approach is targeted fuel management. Priority areas may include settlement edges, roadsides, evacuation routes, firelines, frequently burned slopes and locations with a high probability of ignition. Fuel breaks must also be maintained rather than merely created.
The northern state of Uttarakhand has attempted to connect fuel reduction with local livelihoods and renewable-energy development. The state’s Policy for
Power Generation from Pine Leaves and Other Biomass 2018 encouraged the collection and use of pine needles as feedstock for decentralized energy projects. More recently, the Pirul Lao-Paisa Pao initiative introduced financial incentives for local people to collect dry pine needles and deliver them to designated collection centres. These programmes illustrate how hazardous-fuel reduction can be linked with community participation, rural income and productive biomass use.
Such initiatives, however, depend on reliable collection centres, safe working practices, affordable transportation, sustained demand and viable processing facilities. Pine-needle removal should therefore be concentrated in strategically selected high-risk areas rather than promoted as indiscriminate forest-floor clearance. Briquettes, compost, livestock bedding, handicrafts and energy production may provide supporting markets, but reducing fire risk should remain the primary objective; commercial utilization is an enabling opportunity, not a universal solution.
PUT COMMUNITIES AT THE CENTRE
Many Himalayan fires are first detected, and often initially addressed, by people living near forests; their knowledge of access routes, water sources, wind behaviour and previous fire locations is operationally valuable. Community participation, however, should extend beyond calling volunteers after a fire has started.
The Sitlakhet model in Almora district, Uttarakhand, illustrates a preventive, community-based approach. Local groups in the Syahi Devi–Sitlakhet area have worked with villagers and other stakeholders to encourage the timely and safer management of oan – the customary burning of dried weeds and agricultural residues during field preparation – before the peak fire season. The initiative also promotes village-level awareness, early reporting, fire-line maintenance and coordinated local action. The Sitlakhet model demonstrates how traditional practices can be reorganized to reduce the risk of escaped fires while strengthening community responsibility for surrounding forests.
Such participation must be planned and adequately supported. Villages need clearly defined roles, locally understood warning systems, basic safety training, protective equipment and reliable communication with forest officials. Joint mapping can identify assets at risk, safe assembly points and priority locations for fuel reduction. Women, pastoralists, forest-dependent households and young people should be included because their knowledge, exposure and capacities differ.
Community engagement must never expose untrained residents to fast-moving fires on steep slopes. The objective is a supported partnership in prevention, preparedness, early reporting and safe initial action – not the transfer of institutional responsibility or hazardous firefighting duties to local communities.
TECHNOLOGY AS A BRIDGE TO ACTION
Satellite-based alerts, weather information, geographic information systems and mobile communication have transformed wildfire monitoring in India. The Forest Survey of India (FSI) plays a central role through its Near Real-Time Forest Fire Monitoring system. Fire-hotspot data detected by NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and SNPP-VIIRS sensors are initially processed by the National Remote Sensing Centre and subsequently processed by FSI to generate location-based alerts for state forest departments and registered users. The Van Agni Geo-portal also provides access to active fire detections, large-fire events, fire-prone areas and forest-fire danger information.
These systems can reveal recurring hotspots, support the tracking of large fires and help managers prioritize field verification and resource deployment. Their value, however, depends on what happens after an alert is generated. Information must reach the relevant forest beat quickly and be translated into patrol routes, crew positioning, fuel-treatment priorities and requests for additional support.
Satellite alerts have operational limitations. Detection depends on satellite overpasses and can be influenced by cloud cover, fire size and the accuracy of forest-boundary information. Alerts must therefore be verified through field observations and local communication rather than used as the sole basis for tactical firefighting.
Technology works best as a bridge between national monitoring and local action; it should strengthen field judgement rather than replace it. A technically sophisticated platform has limited value if frontline personnel cannot access, interpret or act on its information; a simpler system embedded in routine decisions may contribute more effectively to timely and safe fire response.
RECOVERY IS PART OF FIRE MANAGEMENT
The end of active suppression is not the end of fire management. Burned slopes may experience accelerated erosion, loss of soil moisture and nutrients, invasive-plant expansion, damage to natural regeneration and disruption of soil and water processes. Restoration should therefore begin with a rapid assessment of burn severity, slope, soil condition, surviving vegetation and regeneration potential. Not every burned area requires plantation; lightly affected sites may recover effectively when protected from repeated fire, grazing and further disturbance.
The post-fire eco-restoration model developed by the Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education-Forest Research Institute for fire-affected subtropical pine forests places assisted natural regeneration at the centre of recovery. The approach protects surviving native seedlings and resprouting vegetation, improves microsites through mulching and soil-moisture conservation, and controls invasive plants that compete with natural regeneration. On erosion-prone slopes, contour or staggered trenches, small check dams and vegetative barriers can help slow runoff, retain sediment and improve moisture availability.
Where natural regeneration is inadequate, carefully planned gap planting or seed-based restoration may be used to reintroduce site-suitable native trees, shrubs and herbs. Species selection should favour ecological compatibility, local diversity and resilience to future fire rather than simply increasing tree numbers. Post-fire treatment should also reduce hazardous fuel continuity without completely removing the litter needed for soil protection and nutrient cycling.
Recovery must be monitored over several seasons to assess plant survival, invasive-species recurrence, soil stabilization and the return of native diversity. These observations allow managers to adjust restoration measures and use each burned site as a source of learning for future prevention, preparedness and ecological recovery.
BUILD CONTINUITY, NOT CAMPAIGNS
One of the largest barriers to wildfire resilience is institutional discontinuity. Research, funding and management activity often expand after severe fire seasons and contract when the immediate crisis passes. Short-term projects can generate useful maps, equipment and training, but lasting resilience requires sustained funding, dedicated personnel, maintained equipment, long-term monitoring and coordination among research institutions, forest departments, disaster-management agencies and communities.
Standard operating procedures can help convert research and field experience into consistent practice. ICFRE-Forest Research Institute has developed forest-fire management standard operating procedures (SOPs) for five vulnerable forest types: tropical dry deciduous; tropical moist deciduous; tropical semi-evergreen; subtropical pine; and subtropical broad-leaved forests. The procedures recognize that prevention, preparedness, suppression and post-fire action must be adapted to differences in fuels, vegetation, terrain and ecological response.
The value of SOPs depends on their field application; they should inform working plans, pre-season training, equipment allocation and post-fire reviews, and should be periodically updated using frontline experience and new research. Success should therefore be measured by more than the number of fires extinguished. Response time, hazardous-fuel treatment, community preparedness, firefighter safety, repeated-fire frequency, ecological recovery and the use of research in operational plans are equally important.
A SAFER HIMALAYAN FUTURE
Fire will remain part of the Himalayan landscape. The practical question is whether each dry season will be treated as another emergency or managed through a continuous programme of prevention, preparedness, response, recovery and learning. The second path is more demanding because it requires coordinated action before smoke appears and sustained commitment after public attention has moved elsewhere.
Moving beyond suppression does not diminish the courage or importance of frontline firefighters. It supports and protects them by reducing avoidable exposure, improving access to timely information and creating landscapes in which extreme fire behaviour is less likely. Strategic fuel management, community participation, satellite-based monitoring, locally adapted operating procedures, ecological restoration and sustained research must therefore work as parts of one system.
The Indian Himalayas cannot be made entirely fire free, but they can become more fire resilient. By connecting national capabilities with local knowledge and turning lessons from each fire season into better preparation for the next, Himalayan states can move from repeatedly reacting to wildfire towards living with fire more safely and sustainably.
Note: This article was completed before the tragic August 2026 floods and debris flows in the Nepal–Tibet border region, which affected steep Himalayan terrain comparable to that of the nearby Indian Himalayas.
Amit Kumar Verma is a senior technical officer at ICFRE-Forest Research Institute, Dehradun, India. His work focuses on forest-fire science, geospatial and machine-learning applications, fire-impact assessment, firefighting tools and safety equipment, and climate-driven fire vulnerability. Verma also contributes to research coordination, technical methodology development and capacity-building programmes in forest-fire management.
PRACTICAL PRIORITIES
- Map risk at the local level and update prevention and response priorities before each fire
- Reduce hazardous fuels strategically around settlements, roads, firelines and recurrent hotspots while retaining enough litter to protect soil and nutrient cycling.
- Link pine-needle collection and productive use with safe practices, dependable markets and clearly targeted fire-risk reduction.
- Strengthen community-based prevention and early reporting using lessons from initiatives such as the Sitlakhet model, without exposing untrained residents to hazardous
- Translate Forest Survey of India satellite alerts, fire-danger information and predictive models into rapid field verification, crew deployment and locally informed action.
- Apply forest-type-specific standard operating procedures and assess post-fire recovery according to burn severity, erosion risk and natural-regeneration
- Prioritize assisted natural regeneration, soil and moisture conservation, invasive-species control and native gap planting where intervention is
- Maintain trained personnel, protective equipment, institutional coordination, funding and ecological monitoring beyond individual projects and severe fire seasons.
