Most of the trees, even planted by the forest department along the roads and water bodies get burnt
Faridkot
When the state is in election mode, the farmers, unnecessarily, continue to burn the wheat fields.
Even after making straw, little is left to burn, yet the farmers resort to burning to clear the fields even of the small straws.
The burning of the fields leads to the large-scale burning of the trees, new plantations and even different kinds of the birds and insects get burnt in the field fires.
In some viral videos, it was said that including some humans, nearly 40 goats also got burnt in the bamboo shed when it caught fire in Punjab.
“Nobody seems to care for the environment. The farmers say that they have to burn the paddy stubble as it is unmanageable, but still they are burning wheat fields. The trees,plants, birds and insects all get burnt in field fires despite causing air pollution,” said Sandeep Arora, an environmentalist from Faridkot who is a founder member of the SEER society, dedicated to make more and more plantations and save trees.
“One plant takes about 20 years to become a full tree, but it gets burnt in minutes. Apart from full burning, partial burning of trees leads to their dryness. Human greed is devastating nature and it would result in a natural catastrophe,” said Sandeep.
“Some species of birds and animals, like vultures, have almost gone extinct leaving a gap in the ecosystem. This gap would widen and then human beings would feel the brunt,but it would be too late,” Sandeep says.
In a viral video, two travellers near Gidderbaha tehsil of Muktsar lament on the burning of the wheat residue, which led to the burning of government owned trees and two owlets.
“This is the worst.Two of the four owlets have been charred by the fire and we have saved two. The trees planted by the government have been burnt in the fire. How can we expect to be fine when we are burning trees and birds,” they said in the video.
“Our youngsters would also continue to die like that by drugs and diseases,” they said in the video.
“If now there are floods or some other natural calamity destroys us, don't blame the almighty God.Look, how the full grown tree is getting burnt,” said a man in another video message appealing to the farmers not to resort to burning.
“We are trying our best to spread awareness that fields do not need burning after the harvesting of wheat, even when the fields are cleared after making straw. But still some people resort to burning out of the habit or following their neighbours,” said Dr Amrik Singh, chief agriculture officer Faridkot.
“There are about 43000 farmers and about 298 incidents of burning have been recorded so far which are nearly half than last year. The burning also damages the quality of the soil as micro nutrients also get burnt and green matter is destroyed,” said the CAO.
“I hope that with the passage of time, incidents of burning would decrease,” he said.
But from the fields, it can be seen that no of the incidents recorded officially is much less as one can see vast chunks of land burnt daily.
He said that two rucks loaded with wheat have also been gutted into fire in Gurdaspur district as they caught fire from the fields.
Due to the elections, almost no case has been registered against the violators,it has been learnt.