1. HAZE: 1 LINE, 40 COUNTS

1. HAZE: 1 LINE, 40 COUNTS

C. Kalimantan awaits rains to get rid of haze

It has been a common scene for the past three months here to see
motorists riding through downtown Palangkaraya wearing masks.

Vehicles slumber their way through the streets, some of them
switching on the headlights to help improve visibility.

On both sides of the streets, pedestrians, while their number
has become rare, commute lackadaisically, struggling against the
cloud of smog either by using masks or simply covering their face
by hands occasionally.

Palangkarayans are forced to cope with the irritating haze
from burned or burning forests.

Between 400 and 500 hot spots have been reported to have
beleaguered the town, which has a population of 165,000 people
according to the 2001 data.

Each hot spot may contain several closely-spaced fires.

As a result, the town is clouded with thick smog, which
results in the drop in visibility and an increased in respiratory
problems.

"What a wonderful haze paradise!" Nicola Waldes, who hails
from Britain, made a mockery of the adverse condition.

The haze usually comes in the morning and will only disappear
late in the afternoon thanks to the wind. During its visitation,
the visibility, which ranges unpredictably from day to day, drops
to around 300 meters.

The range of visibility could get improved, allowing
once-in-a-while rain, or worse. When it gets worse, as it
happened in the past two weeks, the haze even reduced the
visibility to only between fifteen to twenty meters, which
brought the town almost to a halt.

"It's difficult to see through while driving. Everyone
preferred to stay at home," Adi, a taxi driver, told The Jakarta
Post.

School children are deterred from their activities with the
local administration announcing optional days-off. Working hours
in a number of government and private offices are cut off.

Workers lazily come to their office and leave earlier.

The constant presence of haze has hazardously increased the
concentration of dust particles in the air to 1,000 PM
(particulate micron) for the past weeks, which exceeds the
tolerable level of 300 PM.

Five people were reported to have died from respiratory
problems. Although the local health office claimed that the
deaths were not necessarily caused directly by the smog as they
were said to have already contracted an acute respiratory
illness, the haze appeared to have provoked the last blow to
their resilience.

Thousands of people are also reported to be suffering from the
breathing-related problems, ranging from minor to acute ones.

Except for last week's reported arrival of a Jakarta entourage
to Palangkaraya, the Tjilik Riwut Airport, which is 7 km
northeast of here, has hardly been accessible.

A Fokker aircraft looked idle at the side of the apron of the
air base, whose runaway is 2,100 meters long and 30 meters wide.

With visibility dropping significantly below the minimum
required range of 1,000 meters, flights have been halted since
August.

"It would be too risky to fly if the visibility is around 200
or 300 meters," Yadie, an airport attendance, said.

The haze inflicts loss to the economy. The closure of the
airport subsequently affects the hotel industry. Many hotels are
complaining about the drop in the occupancy rate by almost fifty
percent.

2. HOT: 1 LINE, 45 COUNTS

Fires prompt call for conservation of peat forest

As fires have been an annual episode in Central Kalimantan the
government needs to conserve the remaining peat swamp forests,
according to the Center for International Cooperation in
Management of Tropical Peatland (CIMTROP).

"A delayed effort to conserving the existing peat swamp
forests will result in a potentially prolonged threat of forest
fires," CIMTROP Director Suwido Limin told The Jakarta Post here.

CIMTROP, which was founded in 1998, is a non-government
organization specializing in the peatland research. The NGO
affiliates to the Palangka Raya University.

In its peatland management, CIMTROP has garnered partnership
with foreign organizations, including Hokaido University of
Japan, Nottingham University of Britain, the Global Peat
Initiatives of The Netherlands and Zoological Garden of
Australia.

Although the intensity of fires has reduced after rains last
week, the people of Central Kalimantan, particularly those in the
capital city of Palangka Raya, are still struggling against the
choking haze which have plagued over the past three months.

The rampant fires have threatened the integrity and long-term
stability of the peatland ecosystem and the biodiversity.

CIMTROP has proposed that the peat swamp forests be allocated
as a conservation enclave to help reduce the risk of catching
fires.

Recalling the Mega Rice Project (MRP) during the Soeharto era,
Suwido said that the launching of the project, which was then
carried out by the building of canals, deteriorated the peatland
ecosystem.

The canals, about 2,000 kilometers in length, was constructed
to help convert the area into a farm land. While the campaign has
been a failure, the canals have speeded up drainage.

Nick Baker, a Nottingham University graduate specializing in
geography, said in his presentation at the recent environment
conference in Bali that the construction of canals promoted
drainage and peat desiccation, which would result in major long-
term changes to the peatland ecosystem.

"In its natural state, the peat is flooded for nine months of
the year. The peat acts as a reservoir, storing water and slowly
releasing it into the river.

"During the dry season the peat drains slowly. The
construction of canals has severely altered this state," Baker
said in his paper.

Baker was in Palangka Raya for a month studying the illegal
logging and its environmental impact. The illegal logging, he
says, contributes to fires.

"The peat that remains dry up to three months, which
significantly increases the risk of fire," he said.

A study shows that the MRP was an ecological disaster on a
grand scale in which more than 20 percent of the peat swamp
forest of Central Kalimantan was destroyed.

There is no update data about the extent of the peatland. The
1988 data showed there was 2.12 million hectares of peat swamp
forest in Central Kalimantan, compared to 6.8 million hectares in
Kalimantan.

The peat swamp forests in Central Kalimantan are found mostly
in the southern part of the province, from Buntok at the
easternmost and Pangkalan Bun in the westernmost.

Erna Shinta of the Palangka Raya-based Darwin Herbarium said
that the Central Kalimantan was home of around 4,000 species of
plants.

3. ZOO: 1 LINE, 35 COUNTS

Frozen zoo clones endangered species

Tucked into a corner room of a Mission-style building up on the
San Diego Zoo's Hospital Hill is a modern-day Noah's Ark.

Contained in four deep-freeze tanks is an incredible menagerie
of some of the rarest animals on the planet, including pandas,
condors and even a California gray whale.

The animals aren't on display, of course. Tissue samples from
each are stored in small plastic vials, which are submerged and
frozen in liquid nitrogen at minus-196 degrees Centigrade.

When scientists first created the so-called Frozen Zoo 25
years ago, they had no idea why. Freezing live cells of
endangered species just felt right.

Today, that foresight is about to pay off.

Come March, San Diego Zoo scientists are optimistic that life
will spring from their frozen menagerie, the largest such
collection known.

Grazing on a farm in Iowa are 11 cows pregnant with endangered
bantengs. Hunted for their slender, curved horns, these white-
stockinged animals, also known as Bali Cattle, number fewer than
8,000 in the wild, mostly scattered in small herds on the island
of Java.

Scientists at Advanced Cell Technology, which caused quite a
ruckus last year by trying to clone human embryos, fused the
Frozen Zoo's banteng DNA into 30 cows' eggs, zapped them with
electricity to prompt development and hoped for a banteng birth.

This summer's experiment has turned out much better than
anyone expected, with scientists giddily predicting as many as
six cloned bantengs calling a cow "mom".

"We are going to end up with a small herd," said Advanced
Cell's Dr. Robert Lanza.

What to do with this "herd" is still under discussion. The
ultimate goal is to place any cloned animals alongside the
bantengs currently on display in the San Diego Zoo's Hoof and
Horn Mesa. But the scientists want to first ensure the animals
are healthy for travel and have enough social skills to integrate
and thrive with the naturally born bantengs.

Many hope this novel, cross-species cloning experiment will
someday turn into a routine and powerful tool in conserving
endangered species - and, perhaps, even revive extinct animals.

"This isn't a stunt," said Oliver Rider, head of the zoo's
Frozen Zoo program. "It's a new arena and we have the
responsibility to see what benefits may come from this
technology."

How to rejuvenate dying species has always been a conundrum
for conservationists. Do you try to motivate the endangered
species in the wild or in captivity? What is the prudent level of
human help for pandas and other animals that have a notoriously
tough time conceiving?

Rider and his fellow conservationists say cloning is not the
solution. Preserving habitats, hunting bans and other
conservation methods are a much higher priority. Still, the
technology could be a useful tool, especially when it comes to
genetic diversity.

Instead of relying on the existing and limited gene pool of
the live endangered species, scientists hope they can use cloning
to reintroduce the genes of long-dead animals. The bantengs
growing in the cows all came from the cell line of one banteng,
Stud No. 319, that died 20 years ago.

A scant few others are working on similar projects.
The Audubon Center for Research of Endangered Species is working
on cloning a number of rare animals, including the banteng,
antelopes and exotic cats. China is working with rabbits as
surrogates for cloned pandas, which are about the size of a stick
of butter when they're born.

There's even talk about bringing extinct animals like the
woolly mammoth back to life with the technology, a premise Rider
dismisses as unrealistic.

"That's Jurassic Park," Rider said. "Interesting but
impossible."