Experience the Jungle Life…

The fire  was started  by a villager who is farming inside the Park area which is on the south part of the Sekonyer river, this area has been a conflict area between local government and the Park Authority for already long time, but they have agreed the border for the farming village, the people don’t live there but they farm there, and to protect the Park from the fire, they had made a big fire line around the village, unfortunately one of the people was too greedy that he opened a new farming land outside their fire line, and when he burnt the land the fire spread so fast until he couldn’t handle anymore so he ran away. The government as usually will take ages to catch this kind of criminal.

Many people think that we can’t do anything, but if we don’t try we wouldn’t know, since we don’t have any budget to make water drop from a plane, at least we can try to make many  fire lines for now, and guard the fire to let it burn only the area inside the border, with this method we should sacrifice some more forest but will safe bigger area of forest and to do this we need so many people to be ready along the border to extinguish the fire that reach the border and also if they fire flew from the tree tops across the border.

Unfortunately until now the Park Authority only sent their people to be in the field for few days, what did they do? Some of them are good and responsible Forest Polices, willing to work with us but some of them are just lazy and sleep in the camp.

The central government in
Jakarta said they will use a cargo plane that can carry 400 ton and some helicopters to drop water in some fire spots in Central Kalimantan and Sumatra but it’s still a plan.

Let’s see..

 Hello Everybody,

Here is the latest news from
Tanjung Puting National Park,
We are having scary situation, the fire has been spreading so fast and now getting close to our main post, Tanjung Harapan. Just few days ago our team made a fire line to protect our reforestation work in Beguruh, but yesterday the fire blew to our main post which is 4 km from Beguruh, and now the fire is only about 2, 5 km from Tanjung Harapan. If the fire won’t stop soon, we are worry it will reach our post.

The picture in the “FIRE “ album were taken  only on the 1st day of the fire, and the 3rd day, by now the fire has been spreading for 12 days, the pictures in the file “Fire in the Park” were taken on the Oct, 11^th.

More than 500 hectares has been swollen by the fire by now.

Hopefully government will take a real action, otherwise not only the orang-utan will loose their home but the government themself will loose devisa, the tourists who mostly come to see the jungle and the orangutan will be dissapointed to see a burnt and empty Park

This evening Pangkalan Bun was so smoky, my eyes burning and cried, besides from the smoke

also from the text massage I have just got that  the fire is getting bigger and spreading so fast, swallow some of  our work.

But in town people seems don’t  care about the fire, they act like nothing  happened, do they  ever ask where all of  this smoke came from, or what could  we do ? they burning their rubbish and their land instead, and play fire lights on the streets.

Two days ago the Park Authority gave up and left the field , almost all of the Forest Police went back to town ,

only few people stayed to help FNPF staff to make fire line, so depressing for us who work in the area,

but luckily today they went up again with many people or maybe almost all Forest Police, 30 people of Park Authority now in action.

I haven’t seen any died animal unless a baby bird in the nest, it’s sad

RecentlyWe can hear many birds sounds around the post   more than usual, I assume they are migrating from the burnt forest. 

Ok will continue later, with the news

Greeting from the very hot
Borneo

Orang hutan

10 OCt

The smoke is still thick till almost midday, when coming to town this morning with a speedboat, the speedboat driver told me about an accident in town that happened yesterday because of the smoke, a truck hit a motorcyce and a kid died from that accident.  : (

It’s already 10 am here in Kumai port, but it feels like still very early in the morning, because of the smoke that fills the air and that means the fire is still going on in the park and still burning the forest.

Arrived there we were surrounded by a thick smoke and we had to walk about 4 km from river side to reach the fire.

Unfortunately we were not equipped with any proper equipment because we don’t have any, except our buckets and “parang”. So when we got there we just stood still for few seconds to think what we should do. I was the only girl there with 15 men, so I couldn’t help to open my mouth and grumbling… Oh what should we do, what are we going to do now… “ But one of us had the inisiative and began the step by hitting the fire so we all moved and did the same, although I myself feel hopeless because the wind was so big and the fire approaching us so fast, but later we found a helpful way, we cleaned the dry leaves and the woods and try to put the fire in the middle and after hitting the fire we put soil  as a border so if the wind blow it won’t turn the fire on again. We are happy we could stop that side but the other side untill now is still on because of the swamp area, that makes easy to burn under ground.Some people are still working on there and maybe camp there to watch out the fire not to eat more forest and our reforestation works. Hopefully rain will come soon. Ok, prayer and your support will be helpful.