History Headline: Are Uttarakhand’s pine trees to blame for the fires?

Pine trees, a Himalayan native

Native to the Himalayas, chir pine or the longleaf Indian pine, was not introduced to the Himalayas by the British, as is often believed, though they certainly gave it preference for its commercial use, mainly lumber and resin. Found all over the Western Himalayas at an elevation between 1,000 and 2,000 metres, it covers large parts of Garhwal and Kumaon where it can be seen growing on steep slopes and can be identified by its three needles and its round cone (unlike the elongated cones of other pines).

“During forest fires in Mussoorie and Landour, one of the frustrating things would be that people fighting the fire would put it out in a certain section but one of the pine cones would catch fire up above and come rolling down and start it all over again. They are round, and roll down the hill and are full of resin, so it’s just like a fire bomb going off,” says Stephen Alter, author of Wild Himalaya: A Natural History of the Greatest Mountain Range on Earth.

“Chir pine has been here for centuries but during the British period, it was promoted for tapping its resin. For a long period in the middle hills, oak forests were cut mainly to make coal and wood charcoal and that allowed the chir pine to expand more,” says Dr G S Rawat, emeritus scientist, Uttarakhand Council for Science and Technology.

Alter remembers going into pine forests when he was younger and finding almost every tree notched, with empty tins nailed into it to collect sap. “When we were children, we would break off the bark and carve it because it’s very soft and light, and we would carve boats out of them and float them,” he recalls.

Historian and environmentalist Shekhar Pathak says, “In the days before artificial resin, turpentine was made from resin from pine. In fact, in the colonial period, the first industry was a leesa (resin) factory in Kashipur around 200 years ago,” says Pathak. Since the chir is hardy and fast growing, says Pathak, “even the forest department doesn’t have to make much effort with the chir pine like they would to grow baanj (oak) which is a slow-growing tree.”

After a government ban in 1981 on felling of trees over 1,000 mt above sea level, “the chir got an opportunity to spread lower in the foothills where the sal grows and above too, among the broad-leaved trees because it’s the nature of the chir to colonise,” says Pathak.

The inflammable needles

The tradition of burning chir forests is perhaps as old as the tree. As Ramachandra Guha writes in The Unquiet Woods, “The needles of chir falling onto the forest floor both suppressed the grass and rendered the hillside dangerous for cattle. Thus, in late April or early May, villagers resorted to the time-honoured remedy of fire to obtain a fresh crop of grass.” Steps taken by the British to stop this practice often sparked popular protests.

While its needles tend to catch fire easily because of their high resin content, the bark of the tree doesn’t catch fire easily since it has a very high ignition temperature — which is why blacksmiths use the bark of the chir pine in their furnaces to melt metal.

A few years ago, the Uttarakhand government had considered cutting pine trees to combat forest fires, an idea it later abandoned. “For the short-term and long-term management of the forests in Uttarakhand, the dense chir pine forest, more like monocultures, must be converted into mixed forests. More broad-leaf species should be promoted and the dense chir pine forests should be effectively managed and their wood used. The state could effectively manage the chir forests and earn some revenue as well as local people can be given some areas under Van panchayats,” says Rawat

Both Rawat and Pathak emphasise that managing forest fires scientifically is the only way ahead. “The tree is perennial but its needles shed maximum between fall and spring. The dry spell is also during this time. The needles should be removed in November-December as was done traditionally,” says Pathak.