District Development Commissioner Anantnag, Dr Syed Abid Rasheed Shah, today chaired a meeting of Forest Department officers to review the measures for protection of forests from smuggling and forest fires.The DDC said that owing to the prevailing dry spell, the possibility of forest fires have increased manifold. He called upon the forest officers to work in a cohesive manner in order to pre-empt any such incident. For this, he directed that Forest Department officials should ensure round-the-clock patrolling of forest areas.He also recommended the constitution of a core group of different Forest Department wings which will conceive a joint and collaborative action plan for prevention of any such untoward incidents in the district.Regarding the dumping of timber, the District Manager SFC apprised the meeting that against the stock of 3.18 lakh square feet, about 60 percent of timber has been dumped. The DDC directed that the rest of timber should be dumped during this month only and directed the SFC manager to ensure adequate dumping of firewood at different dumping locations in the district.To keep a check on timber smuggling, he asked for proper marking of wooden logs and ensuring the night vigil of vehicles carrying timber to different depots.The DDC also called for afforestation and fencing of forest areas and directed the Soil Conservation Department to identify the vulnerable spots where land and mudslides are recurrent, so that proper measures are adopted.The meeting was attended by the DFO Anantnag, Lidder, Pahalgam, DM SFC, District Officer Soil Conservation, Wardens, DFO Social Forestry and Range Officers of the Forest Department.