 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Fires Rage As Haze Thickens In Borneo
Jakarta (AFP) Sep 08, 2006 At least eight million hectares across Indonesia have been damaged by forest fires in the last month, officials said Friday as dozens of uncontrolled blazes continued on Borneo island. A forestry ministry official admitted that forest and ground fires had destroyed millions of hectares of land in Indonesia last month, with a satellite system detecting 52,599 hotspots during August. "All those many hotspots caused 8.4 million hectares of forests to burn," Koes Saparjadi, an assistant to the forestry minister, said at a conference in central Java Friday. He added that around 60 percent of the burnt land was farming land, and the remainder was forest. Illegal burn-offs caused more damage to Indonesia's environment than rampant illegal logging said Saparjadi. "This destruction of the forests is much worse than illegal logging. Because the fires cause several species of plants to be annihilated," he said. Separately in Palangkaraya, the provincial capital of Central Kalimantan on Indonesian Borneo, around 60 firefighters were struggling to put out blazes, said an official. "The fires are vast, every day they spread further," said Ahmad Yani, a coordinator of the teams tackling the infernos. Elsewhere dozens of firefighters were trying to extinguish fires in several districts, including ground fires in the Pulang Pisau area which Yani said had been burning since last week ago. Haze from the fires in Central Kalimantan reduced visibility to less than 500 metres, threatening to interrupt air traffic, said an official from the Palangkaraya's meteorological agency. "Now visibility is down to 500 metres, planes can still take off but we will have to see later," said the official called Hidayat. Burning to clear land for crops, a common practice in Indonesia and some parts of Malaysia, causes an annual haze that smothers parts of Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand as well as Indonesia itself. Indonesia's neighbours have urged Jakarta to prevent the forest clearing burn-offs, warning that it is hurting business and putting off tourists. The Indonesian government has outlawed land-clearing by fire but weak enforcement means the ban is largely ignored.
Source: Agence France-Presse Community Email This Article Comment On This Article Related Links Save the Forests at Wood Pile Forestry News - Global and Local News, Science and Application
Large-Scale Farming Now Causes Substantial Forest Loss in Amazon
College Park MD (SPX) Sep 08, 2006A University of Maryland-led study of Amazon deforestation in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso shows that direct conversion of forest to cropland in the state totaled over 2000 sq. miles (540,000 hectares) during 2001-2004, peaking in 2003 at 23 percent of all deforestation for that year. According to the researchers, the findings signal a shift in deforestation from the historic uses of cattle ranching and small-plot farming toward large-scale agriculture. |
|
|
| The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2006 - SpaceDaily.AFP and UPI Wire Stories are copyright Agence France-Presse and United Press International. ESA PortalReports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additionalcopyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. Advertising does not imply endorsement,agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by SpaceDaily on any Web page published or hosted by SpaceDaily. Privacy Statement |
