Logging Licenses Revoked over Smog Crisis
10/3/97
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Headline: Logging Licenses Revoked over Smog Crisis
Source: Reuters
Date: 10/3/97
Author: Jim Della-Giacoma
Copyright 1997 Reuters Limited
Copyright 1997 Excite Inc.
JAKARTA, Indonesia - Indonesia Friday revoked
logging licenses of 29 timber firms implicated in
fires responsible for choking smog across much of
southeast Asia.
The official Antara news agency said the move
followed an ultimatum to 176 companies to account
for their actions after satellite data images showed
so-called fire hotspots on land licensed to the
firms.
The deadline expired Thursday.
"The number of logging licenses revoked is 151,"
director-general for forest protection and
preservation Soemarsono said.
He said some of the 29 companies lost more than one
license, but did not elaborate.
Malaysia meantime warned that although its skies had
cleared now, they could again fill with smog from
Indonesia if current wind conditions changed.
"What we know is that the worst for Indonesia in
terms of the forest fires is far from over and that
could mean we are still at risk," Malaysia's
Environment Department director-general Tan Meng
Leng said.
Antara news agency blamed the smog for a motorboat
accident on a river in Indonesia's Sumatra island
which killed five students and left four missing.
The motorboat carrying 48 students collided with a
freighter Wednesday on the Musi River in South
Sumatra province, site of some of the worst bush
fires in the region.
The pollution from bushfires in Indonesia's Sumatra
and Kalimantan regions was also blamed in the
collision last week of two cargo ships in the
Malacca Strait, which separates Sumatra from
peninsular Malaysia. Twenty-nine crew members from
one of the vessels are missing, feared dead.
Poor visibility because of the smoky haze was
reported by the pilot of a Garuda Indonesia Airbus
just before it crashed into a hillside near Medan in
North Sumatra last Friday, killing all 234 people on
board.
A transcript of the conversation between the pilot
and Medan airport control tower suggested there was
confusion over landing instructions.
The smog has triggered health alarms as it blanketed
Singapore and Malaysia, and spread to neighbors
Thailand and the Philippines.
The Indonesian capital Jakarta was affected by the
pollution for the first time this week.
The Jakarta Post Friday quoted the National
Meteorology and Geophysics Agency as predicting air
quality in the city of 10 million people would be
affected for the next two weeks due to forest fires
in Central and East Java.
"The gloomy sky in Jakarta in the past three days is
not caused by forest fires in Kalimantan or Sumatra
but by forest fires in East and Central Java," the
agency's head Sri Dihartoi said.
The newspaper quoted reports as saying fires in
Central Java had destroyed 149,250 acres of forests,
with the Rembang, Blora, Cepu and Boyolali regencies
hardest hit. In East Java, 13,590 acres around
Baluran have been burned.
World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) officials have said
the fires on Java have been set off by spontaneous
combustion as the region endures the worst drought
in decades.
But the fires in Sumatra and Kalimantan have been
blamed on slash-and-burn land clearance for
cultivation by small farmers, and land clearance by
forestry and plantation companies.
Officials have said only intense rains can douse the
flames on the hundreds of thousands of acres of
bushland and underlying peat and lignite coal.
The annual rainy season, which usually arrives in
September, is not expected in full until November.
Malaysian Primary Industries Minister Lim Keng Yaik
was reported blaming Indonesia Friday for not taking
adequate precautions and subsequent action to deal
with the crisis.
"Indonesia realizes the seriousness of their forest
fires. The cause can be debated but the fact is they
(the fires) have to be stopped and ... monitored to
prevent future recurrences," the New Straits Times
quoted Lim as saying before logging licenses were
revoked.
Malaysia's skies were blanketed for nearly a month
under the thick smog from Indonesia's fires.
Officials said strong north-easterly winds and
monsoon rains cleared Malaysia's skies, helped by
fire-fighting efforts in Indonesia where United
Nations sources say 40,000 people are fighting the
fires, including a contingent of 1,450 from
Malaysia.