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)