Japan to Send Experts to Help Restore Mongolia’s Wildfire-Hit Areas

Tokyo (ANTARA) — The Japanese government will send a number of forest protection experts to help restore areas affected by large-scale grassland fires in Mongolia.

In addition to supporting recovery efforts, the experts from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) are expected to report on the fires’ overall impact.

“We will work closely with the Government of Mongolia to provide a package of cooperation to restore the affected areas,” Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi said at a press conference.

He said the cooperation would include supplying necessary equipment and building human-resource capacity for disaster recovery and environmental restoration.

The fire reportedly started following an incident involving a subsidiary of a Japanese telecommunications company.

Japanese telecoms giant KDDI Corp. confirmed last Friday (23 October) that smoke had briefly emerged from beneath a vehicle carrying employees of its Mongolian subsidiary, Mobicom Corp.

The incident took place on 8 October in the Numrug Nature Reserve in eastern Mongolia, before the fire spread to the surrounding grassland.

According to local media reports, the blaze burned at least 530,000 hectares, including around 80 per cent of a nature reserve near the Mongolia-China border.