While the Forest Department fights to douse the forest fire completely in Mudumalai and Bandipur, images of charred animals have been circulating on social media.
While the Forest Department fights to douse the forest fire completely in Mudumalai and Bandipur, images of charred animals have been circulating on social media.
These images are fake according to a tweet from the Karnataka Forest Department. In the Forest Department's tweet, it was mentioned that the Department had not come across any dead animals during the fire-fighting operations, and that the news and photographs of charred animals circulated on social media are far from the truth.
Environmentalists too agree with the Forest Department on the fake news. "There are charred images of an orangutan along with rabbits and deer.
There is no orangutan in this country, and these images have been taken from some foreign country, maybe after a wild fire. The Forest Department has just managed to put out the fire in Bandipur National Park and there are still areas where fire is yet to be controlled in the Mudumalai range.
The Department will be able to take a count of dead animals only after the fire is completely doused. Circulating such fake images of charred animals on social media is truly disturbing and stringent action should be taken against such people," opined an environmentalist.
The massive fire that swept across Bandipur National Park and Tiger Reserve has destroyed 12000 acres of forest land over the last five days.
The Forest Department along with the help of fire fighters, volunteers and IAF chopper services have managed to douse the fire. At the Kerala border though, the Kerala Forest Department has deployed watchers to stop the fire from spreading into Kerala's forests since the fire in the Mudumalai forest range has not yet been brought under control.