Concessionaires warned against forest fires

JAKARTA (JP): The Ministry of Forestry warned forest concessionaires yesterday to avoid using fire to clear land during the dry season which will last until October.

"Forest fires in Indonesia have been mainly caused by forest clearances and sloppiness. Fire is used to keep expenditure down," said the director general of forest protection and nature conservation, R. Sumarsono.

"We also urge concessionaires to provide a special budget for forest fire prevention and for the procurement of fire fighting equipment, and to follow the government-set technical procedures in forestry clearance," he said.

Otherwise, the ministry would not provide any administration assistance for violating concessionaires, he said.

"They (concessionaires) need to educate their personnel and local communities about forest fire prevention and provide field emergency stations," he said.

Indonesia has 120 million hectares of forest. Last year 10,356 hectares of forest, including 5,519 hectares in Java, were destroyed by fire.

He said most forest fires in Java were caused by negligence, like throwing smoldering cigarette butts onto dry wood.

In January forest fires razed 10 hectares of tourism forest in East Kalimantan, 56 hectares of production forest in Central Sulawesi.

In February fires destroyed 24 hectares of production forest in South Kalimantan.

The Institute of Meteorology and Geophysics expects this dry season to be normal and to reach its peak in August and September.

The most susceptible areas are in South Sumatra, Lampung, Jambi, Riau, Kalimantan and Sulawesi.

Sumarsono asked local communities and administrations to take part in preventing forest fires.

The ministry would help by providing in-house training for forestry security guards and a national awareness campaign, he said.

The ministry will also use remote sensing with Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and Interferrometric SAR to supervise forests and monitor areas in critical states.

The radar technology can see through clouds and darkness to create detailed images of the earth, ecology and concessionaires' activities, as well as detect heat and potential bush fire spots.

Sumarsono said the use of the radar was important to map forestry areas in East and Central Kalimantan which were permanently covered by cloud.

The director general of forest inventory and land use planning, Sumahadi, said the government had mapped about 30 million hectares of forestry areas since March 1996. (10)