Kozhikode: No staff to tackle wildfire this time

KOZHIKODE: Jungle zones are under threat of wildfires due to early summer, but posts of more than thirty forest range officers remain vacant. In the four ranges of Wayanad Wildlife Sanctuary three officers got promoted as assistant conservator of forests (ACF) who will be relieved on Wednesday.  Adding to the existing 26 vacancies, eight more would get promoted as ACFs soon. They say the absence of range officers in key forest ranges of Wayanad, Palakkad, Idukki and Kollam would jeopardise forest protection activities and also the firefighting preparedness.

Kerala Forest Protective Staff Association vice-president M. Manoharan said the proposal to promote deputy rangers as range officers had been pending with the government for the last many months.  “The forest department has cleared the proposal and the finance department green signalled. For almost a month the proposal is pending at the chief minister’s office,” he told DC. Meanwhile, environmentalists have warned the forest department against orphaning the three major forest ranges of Wayanad Wildlife Sanctuary when there is an acute shortage of water in most of the woods, and the number of animals has increased due to migration from other hotter forest regions.

Wayanad  Prakriti Samrakshana Samithi president N. Badusha told DC that three experienced range officers Ajit K. Raman (Kurichiad), Heeralal (Muthanga) and A.K. Gopalan (Tholpetty) are being promoted and would be relieved soon. “It is true that these officers deserve promotions which were long pending. But their absence without any replacement would cause irreparable damages to the ecosystem,” he added. The vacancies created as 26 fresh ‘Range Officer’ recruits were sent for two and half years' training. Earlier they were appointed after training, but now the training was made an in-service programme. So if the deputy rangers were promoted or given additional charges of range officers, it would be tough to manage the jungle zones.