Indonesian Wildfire Hotspots Reduced by 33 Percent

Tempo 26 Dec 17;

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The Ministry of Environment and Forestry reported that Indonesia’s wildfire hotspot has been reduced up to zero according to the NOAA satellite observation on Sunday, December 24.

According to the satellite imagery, throughout January 1 – December 24 there have been 2,579 hotspots in total, which is far less than the previous year of 3,859 hotspots. This means that Indonesia’s wildfire hotspots were reduced by 1,280 or 33.17 percent.

The wildfire hotspots were previously spread across four regions in East Java, Central Sulawesi, and Southeast Sulawesi.

The Ministry’s Director of forest and land fire control Raffles B Pandjaitan said the ministry’s prevention and wildfire handling program (karhutla) has also contributed to the hotspot reduction.

Raffles explained that an early warning system together with an early detection, and an early suppression are essential in conducting attempts to avoid wildfires before it spreads to a level which is uncontrollable.

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