Fire Fighting in India's Wildlife Areas Today

The guiding policy with regards to fires in National Parks and Wildlife Sanctuaries is same as that adopted in forest management-suppression of all wild fires. While referring to general causes of forest fires, the protection strategy is viewed along its three cardinal aspects Prevention, detection and lighting the fires. The paper summarises conventional methods as well as presents some highly successful approaches locally developed on some of the wildlife areas. The building blocks of a good fire protection planning fire education for villagers, regular training to staff, maintenance of fire records and its use to improve upon protection measures, finally to evaluate team performance have been discussed and approach suggested.