Forest Fires In Rinjani And Sembalun Due To Humans

Bukit Anak Dara at the foot of Mount Rinjani, Sembalun District, East Lombok Regency, NTB Province, caught fire. BETWEEN ANTARA/HO-Riki.

MATARAM - The Environment and Forestry Service of West Nusa Tenggara Province revealed that the forest and land fires that occurred in Mount Rinjani and Sembalun National Parks in East Lombok Regency were due to human action.

"Basically, the forest fires that occurred in the National Park, Bukit Anak Dara, Bukit Selong, Bukit Nanggi, which were in Sembalun were 100 percent due to human factors," said the Daily Executor (Plh) Head of the NTB Mursal LHK Service as reported by ANTARA, Monday, October 7.

He said that a number of the causes of the fire at the point in the East Lombok Regency area were due to cigarette butts that were thrown away carelessly by humans, causing a fire.

Furthermore, it was the doing of climbers who carried out cooking and drinking activities by making a fire, then it was not perfect to kill the rest of the fire so that it then burned the weeds and savana after being abandoned.

Then the act of poachers who tried to chase their prey by making a fire around the area, so that the fire that had been burned was carried away by the gusts of wind so that the fire burned other land.

"So in the fire incidents as a result, because we know that the area is a savana and weeds so that they can catch fire quickly plus gusts of wind make the burned land become fast and widespread," he explained.

In addition, at several places of fire on Sumbawa Island, it was due to the community's opening of new agricultural land by deliberately burning land. However, how wide the area is, they are still collecting data.

According to him, in monitoring the hotspots and overcoming fires, his party used the forest and land fires monitoring system through the Sipongi application which was monitored for a full 24 hours.

When a fire broke out, his party immediately coordinated to extinguish the fire, especially the forest management unit (KPH), including involving tours of tourism operators where the land was on fire.

"Usually KPH then moves and tours of tourist destination operators have an obligation to extinguish fires or control fires. So everyone is involved in the fire extinguishing process. This is important so that the fire does not spread to settlements. That's what we don't want fires to residential areas," he said.