Rain will take care of forest fires: Expert

JAKARTA (JP): A forestry expert sees an end to the forest fires now raging in Sumatra and Kalimantan in the start of the coming rainy season.

Herman Haeruman, a staff lecturer at the Bogor Institute of Agriculture, said yesterday that rain has already started to fall in northern Sumatra and some parts of Kalimantan.

Earlier reports from the two islands confirm that the rains have come, but remain sporadic.

Last month, the Meteorology and Geophysics Agency in Jakarta predicted that rain should start falling in the northern part of Indonesia, where most of the forest fires are concentrated, in October. Some parts of Java and eastern Indonesia, however, will not see rain until November, some even as late as December.

"Rain usually becomes more frequent in October. It never fails," Herman told reporters during a break from a hearing with Commission IV of the House of Representatives.

The forest fires in Kalimantan and Sumatra have caused thick haze in various parts of the islands, causing health hazards and paralyzing air and river transportation. Last weekend a ferry collided with two boats in Kalimantan's Kapuas River where visibility has been sharply reduced by the presence of the smoke.

Neighboring Malaysia and Singapore have also complained about the haze originating from Indonesia's forest fires.

Local

So far efforts to extinguish the fires have been local. Kalimantan officials have suggested that cloud seeding to induce rain would be the most effective method of putting out the fires.

Herman said yesterday that this method would be redundant now that rain has already started to fall in Sumatra and Kalimantan.

Fighting forest fires by inducing rain would have to be more of a long term program for the future, he said when commenting on Singapore's offer of cooperation in cloud seeding.

Herman said cumulus nimbus clouds have formed in southern Sumatra, meaning that rain can be expected very soon without any cloud seeding.

He conceded that the forest fires have been aggravated by the unusually severe and long dry season this year.

But he stressed that the human factor has been the chief cause of the fires.

What or who caused the fires has motivated an intriguing debate, with the government blaming them on the nomadic tribes who practice slash and burn cultivation, while environmentalists blame forestry concessionaires, whom they say ignited the fires when they were clearing the land.

Tjipto Wignjoprajitno, of the Association of Indonesian Wood Panel Producers and the Forestry Society of Indonesia, however, are refusing to take the rap. They say that the prolonged dry season is the chief cause of the fires.

Herman said poor management by concessionaires and plantation companies in clearing forest land and also nomadic tribes, as well as campers, all have a share in the blame.

Indonesia is becoming increasingly concerned about forest fires because the nation is clearing away segments of its forests each year to make way for residential and industrial areas, as well as for timber and plantation estates.

Herman said that Indonesia should improve the way it manages its forests, particularly at the local level.

"We should prevent the fires from ever starting. We also need some kind of contingency plan in case fire does break out, for example by compelling forest concessionaires to build firebreaks to prevent blazes from spreading," he said.

Concessionaires should also dig ponds which would be useful in fighting fires, he said. (icn)