Forest Fires in Nepal: Fire Season Explainer and Yearly Data

Nepal's wildfire season follows the long winter dry spell: little rain falls between the end of the monsoon in October and the next monsoon in June, and by late winter the forests are blanketed in dry leaves and grass. Fire activity climbs from December, but the great majority of forest fires ignite in the pre-monsoon months of March, April and May, roughly Chaitra to Jestha in the Nepali calendar. April is consistently the worst single month, accounting for well over half of a typical year's incidents in Department of Forests and Soil Conservation records.

In Nepali, a forest fire or wildfire is called dadhelo (डढेलो), while agalagi (आगलागी) usually means a structural fire such as a house fire. Both hazards peak in the same dry, windy spring weeks, and both dominate Nepali news every Chaitra and Baisakh. The season ends abruptly once pre-monsoon showers and then the monsoon arrive in late May and June, damping fuels nationwide.

The problem is growing sharply. According to the satellite-based Forest Fire Detection and Monitoring System (FFDMS), run by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) with the Department of Forests and Soil Conservation (DoFSC), Nepal averaged roughly 3,000 detected forest fires a year between 2012 and 2024, and fire frequency has more than doubled in a decade.

Forest and other wooded land cover about 45 per cent of Nepal's land area, according to the Department of Forest Research and Survey's 2015 national assessment, and most of it is fire-prone in spring. The sal (Shorea robusta) forests of the Terai plains and the Churia (Chure) hills shed huge quantities of leaves in the dry season, building a deep, flammable litter layer, while resin-rich chir pine in the mid-hills carries fire easily across steep, windy slopes.

Fire mapping consistently shows the western Terai and adjoining hills as Nepal's biggest burn zone: in ICIMOD's 2012-2024 records, ten Terai and hill districts from Kanchanpur to Salyan each logged more than 1,500 fires. Research also finds the Churia suffers the highest average annual burned area and fire incidence of any physiographic zone, a serious concern because the fragile range feeds groundwater and streams for the Terai below.

Rural change also feeds the flames. As villagers use less firewood, fodder and leaf litter, and out-migration empties hill villages, biomass has accumulated in the community and national forests that regenerated after the community-forestry reforms of the 1980s and 1990s. Years of unharvested dry fuel mean a single spark, in drought conditions, can become a large landscape fire.

Almost all forest fires in Nepal are started by people; officials commonly estimate that over 90 per cent of ignitions are human-caused. A 2022 study cited by The Rising Nepal attributed about 58 per cent of fires to deliberate burning by grazers seeking fresh grass, hunters and poachers flushing animals, and collectors of forest products; 22 per cent to negligence such as discarded cigarettes and unattended cooking fires; and 20 per cent to accidents. Escaped crop-residue burning and the traditional firing of scrubland for new pasture also spread into forests every spring.

Climate is the accelerant. Winter droughts have become more frequent and severe: Nepal received only about a quarter of its normal January-April rainfall ahead of the record 2021 season, and the Department of Hydrology and Meteorology measured 79.4 per cent less December-February precipitation than average before the 2025 season. ICIMOD's mapping shows a strong correlation between winter drought severity and forest-fire risk, and warming, drier winters are lengthening the season.

Deliberately setting fire in forests is punishable by fines and imprisonment under the Forests Act 2076 (2019), and the National Penal Code also criminalises arson, but prosecutions are rare because ignitions are hard to trace and enforcement is weak in remote districts.

The benchmark disaster year is 2021 (2077/78 BS). The Department of Forests and Soil Conservation recorded 6,537 wildfire incidents that year, the most in its records. NASA's Earth Observatory reported that the VIIRS satellite sensor detected roughly 41,000 fire hotspots in Nepal between 1 January and 7 April 2021 alone, the second-highest count for that period in the sensor's record; only 2016 registered more. Fires in 2021 killed several people, forced evacuations, disrupted flights and blanketed the country in smoke for weeks.

Recent seasons confirm the upward trend. After a quieter 2022, ICIMOD's SERVIR programme reported 1,816 forest fires between January and April 2023, about 76.7 per cent more than in the whole of the previous year. In 2024 the DoFSC logged around 5,200 wildfire incidents, the second-highest total on record; smoke disrupted Pokhara flights for weeks and closed Janakpur's airport for nearly a week. After an exceptionally dry winter, more than 1,800 wildfires were reported by early April 2025, and the 2026 pre-monsoon season opened in mid-March amid renewed warnings over air quality and preparedness gaps.

Different datasets count fires differently: satellite systems such as the FFDMS count detections from NASA's MODIS and VIIRS sensors, which can register one large fire as many hotspots or miss short-lived burns, while the government's BIPAD portal counts reported incidents of all fire types, including house fires. Yearly figures should be read with their source in mind.

Every severe fire season now doubles as an air-pollution emergency in the Kathmandu Valley. The valley is a bowl ringed by hills where pre-monsoon temperature inversions trap pollutants; westerly winds carry smoke from western fires straight to the capital, where it mixes with vehicle exhaust, brick-kiln emissions and regional haze from the Indo-Gangetic plain.

The 2021 season produced Kathmandu's most dramatic smoke episode in memory. On 27 March 2021 the capital's air quality index hit 421, deep in the hazardous range, and Kathmandu was repeatedly ranked the world's most polluted major city. The government closed schools and colleges nationwide for four days from 30 March 2021, and poor visibility forced flight cancellations at Tribhuvan International Airport.

The pattern has recurred: Kathmandu again topped global pollution rankings during the April 2024 fire season, and an ICIMOD analysis in spring 2025 found the city's air had been polluted beyond safe levels on 75 of the previous 90 days, with experts pointing to fires in drought-hit western districts. Studies cited by the Kathmandu Post estimate that air pollution cuts average Nepali life expectancy by about 3.4 years and contributes to roughly 26,000 premature deaths a year.

Wildfires share the spring with an even deadlier hazard: structural fires, or agalagi. In the BIPAD disaster database maintained by the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority (NDRRMA), fire incidents account for the largest recorded economic losses of any hazard. The Rising Nepal, citing BIPAD data, reported 18,772 fire incidents between 2014 and mid-March 2023, killing 769 people, injuring 2,548 and causing losses above NPR 22.23 billion - around 77 deaths a year on average.

The Terai is the epicentre of settlement fires: thatched roofs, closely packed houses, open cooking flames and hot, dry spring winds can let a single spark destroy whole villages. BIPAD records show Kathmandu, Morang and Saptari as the most fire-affected districts in 2016-2020, with Morang, Kathmandu, Sunsari, Jhapa and Saptari topping the list after 2020. Between January 2016 and April 2025, fire events - structure fires plus wildfires - made up roughly two-thirds of all disaster incidents recorded in Nepal.

Firefighting capacity remains thin: most municipalities lack functional fire engines, portable pumps have gone to only around 21 district administration offices, and rural first responders to both agalagi and dadhelo are usually neighbours, community forest user groups and security personnel with hand tools.

Wildfires kill firefighters as well as villagers. Nepal's deadliest single wildfire incident came in March 2009 (Chaitra 2065 BS), when 13 Nepal Army soldiers were trapped by a wind shift and killed while fighting a forest fire in Ramechhap district; media reported that fires killed around four dozen people nationwide that year. Elderly villagers are increasingly among wildfire victims, often caught while clearing fields or collecting fodder.

The environmental and economic stakes are enormous. Nepal's first national-scale wildfire carbon study, reported in March 2025, warned that severe fires could put more than 495 million tonnes of carbon at risk - about 170 million tonnes in soil and 325 million tonnes in above-ground wood - undermining Nepal's forest gains and future forest-carbon earnings. Fires also damage biodiversity in protected areas such as Bardiya, Shuklaphanta and Chitwan, degrade Churia watersheds, and hurt tourism when smoke hides the Himalaya during the spring trekking season.

Nepal's main early-warning tool is the Forest Fire Detection and Monitoring System (FFDMS), developed by ICIMOD with the Department of Forests and Soil Conservation under the SERVIR Hindu Kush Himalaya programme. It maps active fires in near-real time from NASA's MODIS and VIIRS satellite sensors and sends automatic SMS and email alerts to registered forest officials and community groups. ICIMOD has also rolled out a fire-danger rating system that forecasts risk from weather and fuel conditions, while the NDRRMA's BIPAD portal compiles incident, damage and loss records.

Suppression still depends on people on the ground. Nepal has no dedicated wildland firefighting service; district disaster management committees mobilise the Nepal Army, Nepal Police and Armed Police Force, while more than 22,000 community forest user groups provide most of the frontline labour, typically beating flames with green branches and cutting firelines by hand. Experts consistently recommend pre-season fuel management, maintained firelines, local training and equipment, and stronger enforcement against deliberate ignition.

For residents, the advice each spring is simple: never burn crop residue or rubbish on dry, windy days; report fires immediately to the district forest office, police (100) or local ward office; check air-quality readings before outdoor activity in March-May; and keep children, the elderly and people with respiratory conditions indoors during heavy smoke episodes.