Concessionaires warned against forest fires

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)