Indonesian Forest Fires Threaten Wildlife, Environment

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Link: http://www.voanews.com/english/2006-11-13-voa22.cfm

 

Indonesian Forest Fires Threaten Wildlife, Environment

 

By Chad Bouchard

Jakarta, Indonesia

13 November 2006

 

Conservationists in Indonesia have warned that fires set to clear land

have killed and injured hundreds of endangered orangutans.

Environmentalists are also concerned the burning of rainforest and

peat bogs is contributing to global warming.

 

Widespread fires in Indonesia have claimed millions of hectares of

land this year on Sumatra and Kalimantan - the Indonesian part of

Borneo - destroying sensitive wildlife habitat and spewing out a thick

haze that has choked neighboring countries.

 

Palm oil companies, loggers and farmers set fires during the dry

season each year to prepare land for crops, but the blazes often rage

out of control.

 

The area destroyed this year was some of the only remaining habitat

left for orangutans, a protected species with a rapidly declining

population.

 

The only great apes living outside Africa, orangutans can only be

found on the islands of Sumatra and Borneo, which is divided between

Indonesia and Malaysia.

 

Willie Smits, coordinator of the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation,

says time is running out for the endangered primates.

 

He said, " The populations are all extremely threatened because of the

fragmentation of the forest. You need a minimum of three thousand

orangutans to have a thousand year chance of survival and that forest

has to stay intact in one big piece. There's only two or three years

left in which we can prevent that these remaining populations are

going to become extinct. "

 

Smits says that only one in three orangutan young are estimated to

live, and mothers only give birth on average once every eight or nine

years.

 

Smits adds that the forest habitat, in particular the sensitive peat

moss bogs known as " domes " , should not only be protected for the

benefit of wildlife, but also to stop the rise in greenhouse gas

emissions.

 

" If we look at the amount of carbon in the peat that is being released

because of the collapsing domes and the fires, that amount is huge, "

he said.

 

" If we would lose the tropical peat swamps, of which Indonesia has

more than 50 percent in the world, we would be looking at a doubling

of global emissions for the next thirty years. "

 

Fires in peat bogs are particularly hard to stop, because they can

smolder underground for weeks without being detected.

 

Smits says orangutans that survive the fires often flee toward water,

where they are more likely to encounter humans.

 

The Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation rescued 137 injured

orangutans in central Kalimantan from fires or from assault by humans

during the land-clearing season, but discovered the remains of many more.