We witnessed a huge forest fire while doing some field work in the Nagla Block of Sanjay Gandhi National Park, Mumbai, in March 2012. It took two of us more than an hour to create a fire line and beat the fire, preventing it from spreading further west. However we couldn’t do anything about the Southern side. Perhaps the fire had been raging since the night before. Around half a square kilometre of forest on the Eastern side had already been taken up.
Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP) is one of a kind national park. It is unique, in that it is surrounded on all sides by an extremely populated city like Mumbai, which threatens to break its boundaries any day now, and spill over into this one last bastion for the voiceless.
If you ever come across such forest fire or any other illegal activities in SGNP, please contact SGNP, Mumbai Control Room (Borivali) on 022-28866449.
You can read more about this incident at Prachi’s blog post.