Fewer hot spots found in Indonesian forests

JAKARTA (JP): There were 2,239 hot spots resulting from forest fires in Indonesia by the middle of 2001, about half the count recorded several years ago, a forestry ministry senior official disclosed on Wednesday.

Wahjudi Wardoyo, the forestry ministry's director general of forest protection and nature conservation, said during a break at an international conference on forest fires in the East Kalimantan town of Balikpapan that the hot spots detected by satellite monitoring had continued to decline in number since 1998.

In 1998, 4,096 hot spots were registered across the country, increasing slightly to 5,181 in 1999, dropping again to 3,154 in 2000 and again to only 2,239 in mid-2001, he revealed, as quoted by Antara.

The international meeting, with 200 participants from 26 countries, was slated to last from July 25 to 28, during which seminars and inspections of razed forest zones in East Kalimantan will also be conducted.

"But the hot spots can only be monitored at temperatures above 360 degrees Kelvin, so that means a lot more must still be beyond satellite detection," admitted Wahjudi.

He added there were 12 fire-prone forest areas in Riau and Kalimantan, with 412 hot spots detected in Riau alone this month.

Forest fires flared up again early this month, affecting North Sumatra and West Kalimantan. Thick smoke blanketed the West Kalimantan capital of Pontianak, the fire's hardest-hit area, resulting in more than 2,500 people needing treatment at local community health centers for haze-related problems.

Indonesia drew harsh criticism from its neighbors in 1997 when smoke from fires allegedly lit by slash-and-burn farmers blanketed large parts of Southeast Asia, hurting tourism and prompting health concerns across the region.

Meanwhile, South East Asia Fire Fight project coordinator Peter F. More said one of the methods of handling forest fires was the empowerment of traditional communities.

"Therefore, in this conference we will be especially dealing with forest fire issues and determining ways of handling the disasters in various countries," he added.

Indonesia is situated between three countries so that any forest fire, however small, will cause smoke hazards to its neighbors, More indicated.

As Wahjudi pointed out at the conference, the communities around forest zones have the tendency to burn forests as a cheaper way of clearing land.

Forestry ministry research and field observations in various regions have shown that 99 percent of forest fires were due to human acts, mostly in the form of land clearance for plantations.

The director general further explained that structurally, three types of land were involved in forest fires: land under long lease, natural forests and forest belonging to local communities.

In the opening-up of estates, forest concessionaires are partly blamed for the forest fires, caused indirectly with the help of local farmers, as had been frequently done in Riau, Wahjudi concluded. (arp)