Forest fires threaten research center

BALIKPAPAN, East Kalimantan (JP): The spreading forest fires in the Kutai National Park near here are threatening a rare species research center, an official said yesterday.

Warsito, the head of the national park located 180 kilometers north of here, told The Jakarta Post that the fires had been spreading fast despite the efforts of park rangers and the local community to contain them.

"The fires are sporadic and to date we have only been able to extinguish the one burning in the Malawan village," he said.

The rare species research center is located in Teluk Kaba village near the 320 hectares of land and forest that had been affected since Tuesday, Warsito said.

Warsito said that if the research center and its surroundings were razed, the country would suffer a huge loss because many rare animal and plant species could be found in the park.

Other villages in the 10,000-hectare forest national park that are affected are Temputu, Teluk Dalam, Sangatta, and Teluk Pandan where a total of 1,002 hectares of agricultural land and forest have been destroyed.

The Kutai National Park is in the Kutai regency. The nearby regency town is Bontang, one of the country's main gas producers. Yesterday, the town was shrouded in smoke from the forest fires in the park, Warsito said.

Flights to and from Bontang were disrupted yesterday. Land transport from Bontang to Sangatta was also disrupted for two hours because roads were littered with branches from the forest fire, he added.

Warsito said fires had also affected the Bontang forest reserve in the regency. However, he could not say how many hectares had been affected.

"But one thing for sure is that fires are raging in an area from Kilometer 10 to Kilometer 19 (along the Samarinda-Bontang highway) with a three-kilometer depth from the highway," he said.

Warsito said joint efforts to fight fires with only several fire brigade trucks were not proving that effective, adding that other measures including digging ditches to stop the fires spreading were already being taken.

The fires forced the Tanjungpura Military Command to move its arsenal from Karang Joang village to Batu Ampar Wednesday.

Two separate fires were burning near Karang Joang village, 15 kilometers east of Balikpapan. Batu Ampar is 10 kilometers away from Balikpapan, officials said.

According to satellite imaging from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on Tuesday, 40 hot spots were visible in the province.

The Environmental Impact Management Agency (Bapedal) here suspects the recent fires, many of which are in plantations and logging concessions are man-made. (42/aan)