Wildfire activity increased by 9.3% annually in the Eastern Ghats and 4.6% in Central India between 2002 and 2022, while the Western Ghats recorded a significant decline. Supporting research shows how repeated fires can alter forest composition, reduce biodiversity and disrupt natural regeneration.

Wildfires are becoming an increasingly complex conservation challenge across India’s wildlife reserves, with some forest regions experiencing rising fire activity while others record a significant decline. A 21-year study across 13 wildlife reserves has identified sharply contrasting patterns in Central India, the Eastern Ghats and the Western Ghats, highlighting the need for region-specific approaches to forest fire management.

Published in Ecosphere on October 19, 2026, the study, titled Changing fire regimes in wildlife reserves of southern India: Trends, drivers, and conservation challenges, analysed satellite-derived fire data across approximately 20,000 square kilometres of protected landscapes between 2002 and 2022.

The researchers recorded approximately 16,667 square kilometres of cumulative burned area during the study period. The Eastern Ghats accounted for 59% of the total, followed by Central India at 16.6% and the Western Ghats at 8.4%.

Annual burned area increased by 9.3% per year in the Eastern Ghats and 4.6% in Central India. In contrast, the Western Ghats recorded an annual decline of 10.8%.

The researchers used data from NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), alongside climatic records, forest-cover loss data and human population estimates, to investigate the factors influencing fire activity.

Their analysis found that climate and human-related variables explained between 21% and 77% of annual fire activity across individual reserves. However, the strength and direction of these relationships varied geographically.

Climate and Human Activities Shape Fire Patterns

Drought, high temperatures and declining soil moisture emerged as important factors influencing fire activity. Eleven of the 13 reserves showed evidence of increasing fire activity during hotter and drier conditions.

Reduced soil moisture and higher atmospheric dryness can dry vegetation, making it more susceptible to burning. However, rainfall can also influence fire patterns by encouraging vegetation growth and increasing the accumulation of combustible material during subsequent dry periods.

Human activities also contributed to differences between landscapes. In Kawal Wildlife Sanctuary, population density was positively associated with fire activity. Local communities use fire in connection with collecting non-timber forest products, including mahua flowers and tendu leaves.

In Nagarjunasagar Srisailam Tiger Reserve, pastoralists use fire to encourage fresh grass growth for livestock grazing. However, human presence does not always increase burning. In Nagarhole National Park and Wayanad Wildlife Sanctuary, population density was negatively associated with burned area.

These findings suggest that local livelihood practices, vegetation conditions and forest management influence how fires originate and spread.

Earlier research provides additional evidence of the relationship between climatic conditions and fire activity. A study published in Geophysical Research Letters in 2021, titled Investigation of Forest Fire Activity Changes Over the Central India Domain Using Satellite Observations During 2001–2020, examined satellite observations across Central India.

The researchers found that approximately 70% of annual forest fires occurred during March and April. Comparing 2006–2020 with 2001–2005, they reported a doubling of fire activity during the February–June fire season and a tripling during the remaining months.

The study associated increased fire activity with persistent warmer temperatures and climate extremes, including drought and El Niño conditions. It also identified the Jagdalpur–Gadchiroli region and Indravati National Park in Chhattisgarh as particularly fire-prone landscapes.

Together, these findings highlight how climatic stress can interact with local land-use practices to influence fire regimes across Indian forests.

Repeated Fires Can Alter Forest Biodiversity

Beyond the extent of burned areas, the ecological consequences of repeated fires are an important concern. Frequent burning can affect seedling survival, tree regeneration and the composition of forest communities, potentially favouring species that are more resistant to fire.

A 2021 study published in Ecology and Evolution, titled Fire alters diversity, composition, and structure of dry tropical forests in the Eastern Ghats, examined burned and unburned plots in Eswaramala Reserve Forest in Andhra Pradesh.

Researchers compared vegetation observations from 2008 and 2018 and found that recently burned plots had higher stem density but lower tree species richness. Forest communities became dominated by a smaller number of fire-tolerant species with characteristics such as thick bark and the ability to regenerate through clonal sprouting.

The study also found that repeated fire exposure shifted the size structure of these species towards smaller, resprouting individuals. The findings indicate that higher tree density does not necessarily translate into greater biodiversity or healthier forest regeneration.

Forest fire spreading across a hillside at night, with flames and thick smoke rising above the surrounding vegetation.Image credit:Pexels

Research in the Western Ghats has reported similar concerns. A 2015 study published in Forest Ecology and Management, examined fire frequency and vegetation recovery in Mudumalai Tiger Reserve.

Using fire-frequency maps from 1999 to 2013, the researchers found that tree diversity declined as fire frequency increased. Low fire frequencies supported greater seedling density, while frequently burned areas showed changes in species composition and forest structure.

These studies provide ecological context to the latest findings by demonstrating that the consequences of fire extend beyond the immediate loss of vegetation.

Why Fire Management Needs a Regional Approach

The relationship between fire and biodiversity is not uniform across ecosystems. While repeated and intense fires can degrade forests, some grassland and savanna ecosystems depend on periodic burning to maintain their ecological characteristics.

A 2024 study in Biotropica, examined management interventions in savanna ecosystems dominated by native Cymbopogon grasses.

The researchers compared areas where fire and grasses were present with areas where fire was excluded, as well as areas where grasses were manually removed alongside fire exclusion.

They found that combining grass removal with fire exclusion was necessary to significantly improve palatable herbaceous plant biomass and plant species diversity. Fire exclusion alone was insufficient to achieve the same ecological improvements.

The research highlights the importance of combining fire management with vegetation restoration and community participation.

The authors of the 2026 Ecosphere study similarly caution against applying uniform fire-suppression policies across all protected landscapes. They recommend management strategies that account for local vegetation, climate conditions, biodiversity requirements and the traditional practices of forest-dependent communities.

The study also acknowledges limitations, including the 21-year observation period and the inability of satellite products with a 500-metre spatial resolution to detect every small fire.

As climate variability and human pressures continue to influence forest landscapes, understanding both increasing and declining fire activity will be essential. The findings suggest that effective conservation requires not simply preventing fires, but understanding when, where and how burning affects the ecological balance of India’s wildlife reserves.

India’s lesser florican and Bengal florican stand out as the country’s highest-priority birds when extinction risk is assessed alongside evolutionary distinctiveness, according to a new study published in Global Ecology and Conservation in October 2026.

The research, titled “Using phylogenetic relationships to assess conservation priorities for birds in India”, applies an approach known as Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered (EDGE) to identify bird species whose loss would represent a particularly significant loss of evolutionary history. The lesser florican (Sypheotides indicus) recorded a median EDGE score of 19.3 million years, while the Bengal florican (Houbaropsis bengalensis) scored 18.95 million years.

The findings highlight a conservation challenge that extends beyond counting threatened species. Some birds represent evolutionary lineages that have few close living relatives. Their extinction could therefore eliminate a disproportionately large amount of evolutionary history.

For India, one of the world’s most biodiverse countries, the researchers argue that incorporating evolutionary distinctiveness into conservation decisions could help direct limited resources towards species facing particularly high risks of extinction.

Why evolutionary history matters

Conservation programmes frequently prioritise species according to population decline, habitat loss and extinction risk. Although these measures remain essential, they do not always capture how much evolutionary history a species represents.

The EDGE approach combines a species’ evolutionary distinctiveness with its extinction risk. Evolutionary distinctiveness measures how isolated a species is on the evolutionary tree, based on its relationships with other living species. A bird with few close relatives may therefore receive a higher distinctiveness score than one belonging to a group with many closely related species.

Combining these measures helps researchers identify species that are both evolutionarily unusual and threatened. The approach can also support decisions about where conservation funding, habitat protection and monitoring efforts may deliver the greatest benefits.

The October study identifies species and regions in India with high avian EDGE scores. Its findings suggest that conservation assessments could benefit from looking beyond the number of species present in a particular landscape to consider the evolutionary history represented by those species.

Grassland loss threatens two distinctive birds

The lesser florican and Bengal florican are closely associated with grassland habitats, ecosystems increasingly affected by changes in land use.

The lesser florican is a critically endangered bird endemic to the Indian subcontinent. It depends on open grasslands for breeding, where males perform distinctive courtship displays during the monsoon. Agricultural intensification, habitat fragmentation and the conversion of grasslands have contributed to the species’ decline.

Wetland and grassland ecosystems provide essential habitats for India’s diverse birdlife.Image credit:Pexels

A separate study published in Frontiers in Conservation Science in August 2026 examined the movements and habitat preferences of lesser floricans in Gujarat. Researchers tracked 12 individuals using satellite telemetry and analysed more than 150,000 GPS locations. The findings showed that grasslands remained the birds’ most strongly selected habitat during both breeding and non-breeding seasons, despite some seasonal use of agricultural land.

The researchers also highlighted the importance of connected grassland landscapes, community-managed grazing areas and the protection of habitat beyond formally designated reserves.

The Bengal florican faces similar challenges. It inhabits grasslands and floodplain habitats in South and Southeast Asia, where changes in land use and degradation of suitable vegetation threaten its survival.

For both species, protecting remaining grasslands is therefore essential not only for maintaining current populations but also for preserving evolutionary lineages that could otherwise disappear.

Conservation planning beyond species numbers

The findings strengthen the case for integrating evolutionary information into India’s biodiversity policies. Protecting areas with high concentrations of threatened and evolutionarily distinctive species could help conservation agencies maximise the benefits of limited resources.

However, evolutionary distinctiveness should complement, rather than replace, other conservation measures. Species with high EDGE scores may require targeted interventions, while habitat protection must also account for wider ecological communities and the needs of local people.

For grassland birds, this means safeguarding breeding grounds, maintaining habitat connectivity and working with communities that depend on these landscapes for grazing and livelihoods.

The study also highlights a broader challenge: biodiversity protection cannot rely exclusively on forests and established protected areas. Grasslands, wetlands and other often-overlooked ecosystems can support species of exceptional conservation importance.

Global efforts to restore degraded ecosystems have reached 252 million hectares across 149 countries, generating more than one million green jobs. However, a new United Nations assessment warns that restoration efforts remain insufficient to meet international biodiversity targets by 2030, calling for a more than fourfold increase in annual investment.

The findings are presented in the Restoration Progress Report: Nature’s Comeback – Scaling Ecosystem Restoration for People and Planet, released on October 29, 2026, by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).

The report provides the first comprehensive global assessment of progress towards commitments to restore approximately one billion hectares of degraded ecosystems. These commitments are linked to the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021–2030) and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which calls for at least 30 per cent of degraded terrestrial, freshwater, marine and coastal ecosystems to be under effective restoration by 2030.

According to the assessment, the 252 million hectares currently documented under restoration represent the largest recorded global restoration effort. However, this accounts for only 34 per cent of the indicative global benchmark associated with the 2030 target.

Freshwater and marine ecosystems lag behind

The report identifies considerable differences in restoration progress across regions and ecosystem types. Asia accounts for the largest share of documented restoration, with 192.2 million hectares, followed by Africa with 36.3 million hectares and Europe with 9.1 million hectares. North and Central America account for 5.8 million hectares, South America 5.4 million hectares and Oceania 3.2 million hectares.

However, the report cautions that these figures should not be interpreted as a ranking of restoration performance, as they also reflect differences in regional land area and monitoring and reporting capacities.

Restoration of terrestrial ecosystems has reached nearly half of the global 2030 target. China reports the largest terrestrial restoration area, with 127.4 million hectares, while substantial restoration activities have also been documented in Mongolia and Kazakhstan.

Progress remains considerably slower in freshwater, marine and coastal ecosystems, despite these environments experiencing rapid degradation.

A river along the side of a dense forest. Image credit: Pexels

The assessment documents 11 million hectares of freshwater ecosystems under restoration across 62 countries and 5.7 million hectares of marine and coastal ecosystems across 46 countries. The report also notes that limited monitoring and reporting may mean that actual restoration activities in these ecosystems are higher than the documented figures.

Meanwhile, the share of countries reporting implemented wetland restoration or rehabilitation programmes has increased from 8 per cent in 2022 to 54 per cent.

Restoration financing needs to increase fourfold

Insufficient investment remains a major obstacle to achieving global restoration commitments. The report estimates that annual restoration financing must increase from US$64 billion to US$296 billion by 2030, representing more than a fourfold rise.

Agroforestry requires the largest estimated annual investment, at US$87 billion, followed by restorative reforestation at US$52 billion, peatland restoration at US$44 billion and seagrass restoration at US$28 billion.

The report identifies employment generation as another potential benefit of scaling up restoration. While more than one million green jobs have already been associated with restoration initiatives, increased global investment could generate up to 32 million additional jobs by 2030.

It also highlights the potential contribution of ecosystem restoration to climate mitigation and biodiversity protection. Research cited in the assessment indicates that restoring just 15 per cent of global priority areas could capture and store 30 per cent of carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions released since the Industrial Revolution and help prevent 60 per cent of projected species extinctions.

The report further identifies the participation and leadership of Indigenous Peoples and local communities as essential to ensuring long-term restoration outcomes. Secure land rights, stronger monitoring systems and sustained political commitment are among the priorities identified.

With five years remaining in the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, the assessment calls on governments to move beyond isolated restoration projects towards coordinated, long-term programmes that address the underlying causes of ecosystem degradation.

It emphasises that the 2030 targets should serve as a milestone in the restoration process rather than its conclusion, as ecological recovery requires sustained action and investment beyond the end of the decade.