A fire line is a strip of forest floor cleared of needles and dry wood, running along a ridge or a path, so that a ground fire has nothing to cross.

Every spring, before the dry months, forest guards walk the lines in the deodar forests and clear them again.

Villagers used to help, in return for the right to collect fallen wood. With fewer households cooking on wood, fewer people come.

The forest department is now paying village groups to clear the lines near their own villages, and says the fires there have been smaller.