Bapedal cautious on who lit forest fires

Bapedal cautious on who lit forest fires

BALIKPAPAN, East Kalimantan (JP): The fresh forest and brush
fires should not be blamed solely on slash-and-burn farmers, a
government official said here yesterday.

"I won't agree if people, without hard evidence, put the blame
for the fires on local people," Deputy Head of the Environmental
Impact Management Agency (Bapedal) Maj. Gen. Adang Ruchiatna
said.

Speaking to The Jakarta Post after inspecting the newest
outbreaks of fires in the province, Adang refused to speculate on
the identity of the culprits of the latest fires.

"We don't want to hastily conclude who should be blamed
because we are still collecting data," Adang said.

Last year, officials and forest concessionaires blamed the
pervasive forest fires in Kalimantan and elsewhere in Indonesia
largely on slash-and-burn farmers.

Adang also refused to say if plantation companies should be
held responsible.

He said his team found 42 fires yesterday, smoldering in the
Kutai National Park and Bukit Soeharto forest reserve.

Accompanied by Bapedal's director for environmental damage
control, Yon Artiono Arba'i, on his fact-finding mission, Adang
said the team had also inspected the recent outbreaks of forest
fires in South and West Kalimantan.

Adang and Yon were sent by the National Coordinating Team for
Fighting Forest and Land Fires to conduct ground checks on the
recent forest fires in the province to confirm allegations that
the fires were man-made.

The coordinating team was set up by President Soeharto last
year when the forest fires were declared a national disaster. The
team was chaired by State Minister of Environment Sarwono
Kusumaatmadja, who also heads Bapedal.

Also yesterday, another visiting official said that three
aircraft -- a Cassa, a Hercules C-130, and a Pilatus water bomber
-- would be deployed to East Kalimantan next Monday to fight the
fires.

Burhan, an assistant to the Coordinating Minister of People's
Welfare, Azwar Anas, who also heads the National Disaster
Management Coordinating Board, said artificial rain would also be
initiated.

Almost 1,400 hectares of land and forest have been razed in
the fires of the past two weeks, resulting in haze that has
disrupted flights at several airports in East Kalimantan.

Antara reported Thursday that fires had also started in
Central Kalimantan and smog had begun to loom over the capital
Palangkaraya.

It said the thin smoke blanketing the area was coming from the
neighboring districts of Kapuas, Kotawaringin Barat and
Kotawaringin Timur.

However, there have not yet been any reports of flight delays.

Minister of Forestry Djamaludin Suryohadikusumo said in the
East Java town of Bojonegoro Thursday that 265,000 hectares of
forests were destroyed across the archipelago last year.

Djamaludin, speaking at the opening of a new forest research
and development center in East Java, said the financial losses
resulting from the fires were Rp 260 billion ($26 million at the
current rate).

The fires, many of them deliberately started to clear land for
agricultural purposes, were blamed on the prolonged dry season
caused by the El Nino weather phenomenon originating in the
Pacific Ocean. (42/aan)