Leave alone inaccessible forest regions, forests inside Sambalpur town are now burning leading to loss of huge patches. There is very thick forest cover inside the town, particularly in the Laxmi Dunguri Hill at the western end of the city and the Budharaja Hill situated in the heart of the town. But these two are not free from forest fire.
However, miscreants, like other parts of the distant places, set ablaze these two hills causing immense loss to the trees and animals living inside.
More interestingly, a meeting on forest conservation was held on Wednesday morning (March 6) and the forest caught fire on the same day, sources said. Since the place is situated in the heart of the town, the fire brigade rushed in and extinguished the fire after a lot of pain.
On Wednesday morning, a vast rally by the nature lovers led by Prakriti Mitra Rushi Patra was taken out in the important parts of the town close to the Budharaja Hill with the sole intention of making people aware of the benefit of forests and how to control forest fire. They also held a meeting near DIET, Sambalpur with a huge gathering of locals. Despite all this, the miscreants set the forests on fire a few hours later.
In a similar practice, around 15 miscreants entered into Laxmi Dunduri, a natural teak zone. While collecting timbers, they also didn’t hesitate to set fire to the hill forest. However, the Van Suraksha Samity swung into action and intimated the forest officials in time, which along with the VSS members jointly controlled the fire and saved the trees.
