Govt to intensify fight against forest fires

JAKARTA (JP): The government is to intensify its battle against forest and land fires in East Kalimantan through cloud seeding this week, a senior Ministry of Forestry official said yesterday.

Director General of Forest Protection and Nature Preservation Soemarsono said cloud seeding was needed to back up fire-fighting efforts on the ground.

"Details of the plan are being prepared, but Insya Allah (God willing) we'll start Friday. The operation will include clearing the haze and then seeding clouds," he said.

Soemarsono said fires have ravaged more than 12,000 hectares of land and forest since January when the monsoon stopped.

He said the razed areas included 2,500 hectares in Kutai National Park, 7,000 hectares in industrial timber estates, 1,700 hectares in plantations, and the rest in the Bukit Soeharto forest reserve and other logging concessions.

He said the government would only fight the fires raging in protected parks and forests while the rest would be left to the forest and plantation concessionaires to extinguish.

Last week the government dispatched a Transal C-160 water bomber to fight fires in the protected forest, while a water bomber will be deployed this Thursday.

Soemarsono said fire fighters on the ground -- comprising members of the Armed Forces, government, NGOs, and local people -- had also been adequately equipped.

Last year fires in Kalimantan and Sumatra -- declared a national disaster -- razed more than 300,000 hectares of land and forest. They caused millions of people here and in neighboring countries to suffer health problems, delayed thousands of flights and resulted in a sharp drop in tourist arrivals.

Last year's disaster was largely blamed on timber and palm oil company owners, but none have so far been charged with any criminal offenses.

In East Kalimantan this year, Antara reported, 17 timber and palm oil companies had been warned by the local government for starting fires.

East Kalimantan Governor H.M. Ardans was also quoted by the news agency as saying yesterday that fires in the province had been caused by "an over-exploitation" of the forest.

As many as 65 forest concessionaires were exploiting 11 million of the 21 million hectares of forest in the province, Ardans said.

The vastness of the areas given to concessionaires has made it difficult for the local government to supervise land clearing, he said.

He said the fires were "not the sins of the East Kalimantan people".

In Yogyakarta, Minister of Forestry Djamaludin Suryohadikusumo opened yesterday the five-day meeting of the 17th session of the Asia-Pacific Forestry Commission.

Sponsored by the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization, the meeting is being attended by delegates from 22 countries and 10 intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations.

Djamaludin said Indonesia developed industrial forests in order to protect its declining natural forest and secure supplies of raw material for forest-related industries.

Indonesia currently has 3.2 million hectares of industrial forest, 1.2 million hectares of which are in Java. The country plans to plant to 6.2 million hectares of industrial forest.

To meet the target, the country is currently converting an average of between 250,000 and 300,000 hectares of its natural forest into industrial forest each year.

"We can't be too dependent on natural forest as it grows very slowly and yields only about one cubic meter of wood per hectare per year. An industrial forest, on the other hand, can produce up to 20 to 25 cubic meters of wood per hectare per year," he said. (swa/aan)