International Forest Fire News
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UNITED NATIONS ECONOMIC COMMISION FOR EUROPE FOOD AND AGRICULTURE ORGANIZATION OF THE UNITED NATIONS INTERNATIONAL FOREST FIRE NEWS No. 26 – January 2002 ii UNITED NATIONS ECONOMIC COMMISION FOR EUROPE FOOD AND AGRICULTURE ORGANIZATION OF THE UNITED NATIONS INTERNATIONAL FOREST FIRE NEWS No. 26 – January 2002 ii NOTE The statements made in the articles are those of their authors and do not necessarily correspond to those of the secretariat or the official views of the author's home countries. Furthermore the designations employed and the presentation of the material of this publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the Secretariat of the United Nations concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area, or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. International Forest Fire News (IFFN) is an activity of the Team of Specialists on Forest Fire, of the Joint FAO/ECE/ILO Committee on Forest Technology, Management and Training, and the Global Fire Monitoring Center (GFMC). Co-sponsors of IFFN and / or GFMC are: The U.S. Department of the Interior The UN International Strategy for Disaster Bureau of Land Management Reduction (ISDR) The World Bank Disaster Mangement Facility The World Conservation Union ProVention Consortium Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische The International Boreal Forest Research Zusammenarbeit Association (IBFRA) Fire Working Group The IGBP International Global Atmospheric The International Union of Forestry Research Chemistry Project (IGAC) Focus Impact of Organizations (IUFRO) Biomass Burning on the Atmosphere and Forest Fire Research Group 8.05 Biosphere "Biomass Burning Experiment" (BIBEX) iii CONTENTS EDITORIAL...............................................................................................................................................................................1 ASIA AND OCEANIA FIRE SPECIAL.................................................................................................................................2 Australia Fire Situation in Australia...................................................................................................................................................2 China Fire Situation in China.........................................................................................................................................................9 Fiji Report on the Fire Situation in Fiji ..................................................................................................................................15 Navosa Sustainability Study: Preliminary Results of the Survey on Burning .........................................................20 India Fire Situation in India ........................................................................................................................................................23 Community Involvement in Forest Fire Prevention and Control: Lessons from Joint Forest Management (JFM)............................................................................................................28 Forest Fire and Biotic Interferences - A Great Threat to Nilgiri Biosphere...............................................................31 Indonesia Fire Situation in Indonesia ...............................................................................................................................................37 Community Based Fire Management: The South Kalimantan Experience................................................................46 Japan Forest Fire Situation in Japan ..........................................................................................................................................54 Korea Fire Situation in Republic of Korea.................................................................................................................................61 Malaysia Forest Fire Situation in Malaysia ....................................................................................................................................66 Mongolia Fire Situation in Mongolia................................................................................................................................................75 Nepal Forest Fire Situation in Nepal..........................................................................................................................................84 New Zealand Wildland Fires in New Zealand in the 1990s: Retrospective and Challenges ..........................................................87 Philippines Fire Situation in the Philippines.......................................................................................................................................92 Sri Lanka The Forest Fire Situation in Sri Lanka ............................................................................................................................96 Thailand Special Report on Forest Fire.........................................................................................................................................100 Vietnam Fire Management Assessment Tram Chim National Park, Dong Thap Province, Viet Nam...............................105 ® Due of the timelag between editing and print/distribution of IFFN, readers interested in meeting announcements are kindly requested to visit the Internet version of this issue for update and short-term announcement of meetings (continuously updated) on <http://www.uni-freiburg.de/fireglobe> iv International Forest Fire News (IFFN) is published on behalf of the Joint FAO/ECE/ILO Committee on Forest Technology, Management and Training and its secretariat, the Timber Section, UN-ECE Trade Division. Copies are distributed and available on request from: Timber Section, UN-ECE Trade Division Palais des Nations 1211 Geneva 10 SWITZERLAND Fax: ++41-22-917-0041 E-mail: [email protected] The publication is edited and prepared by Johann Georg Goldammer, Leader of the FAO/ECE/ILO Team of Specialists on Forest Fire, at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Germany. The preparation of this issue was supported by Daniel Nagy and Alexander Held (Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Global Fire Monitoring Center). Mailing address, telephone and fax numbers of the editor: Johann Georg Goldammer Fax: ++49-761-80 80 12 The Global Fire Monitoring Center (GFMC) Tel: ++49-761-80 80 11 Fire Ecology Research Group E-mail: [email protected] Max Planck Institute for Chemistry c/o Freiburg University PO Box 79085 Freiburg GERMANY All current issues of IFFN are posted on the homepage of the Global Fire Monitoring Center (GFMC) and can be accessed @ http://www.uni-freiburg.de/fireglobe/ All IFFN contributions published between 1990 and this current issue are accessible through 61 country files and other special files on the GFMC website. Call for contributions Readers of the International Forest Fire News are warmly invited to send written contributions to the editor at the above address. These may be in the form of concise reports on activities in wildland fire management, research, public relations campaigns, recent national legislation related to wildfire, reports from national organizations involved in fire management, publications, personal opinions (letters to the editor). Photographs (black and white) and graphs, figures and drawings (originals, not photocopies, also black and white) are also welcome. Contributions are preferably received by e-mail (text as non-encoded ASCII file, Word Perfect 5.1 or Word 6.0, Word97/8; graphic files saved as *.JPG, *.GIF or similar) or on diskettes. Hard copies of figures and photographs should be submitted by mail (please do not submit by fax). The deadlines for submitting contributions to the bi-annual issues are: 15 May and 15 November. 1 EDITORIAL In the Editorial of International Forest Fire News No. 24 (April 2001) the rationale and a short overview of the FAO Global Forest Fire Assessment 1990-2000 within the Forest Resources Assessment 2000 (FRA) has been presented. Most of the country contributions that include statistical wildland fire data and narrative information regarding the fire situation in the 1990s have been prepared for publication in IFFN and the FAO report. This special issue of IFFN includes national fire reports from Asia and the Pacific. Meanwhile the FAO "FAO Global Forest Fire Assessment 1990-2000" has been published in full length on the internet. The website address on which the report can be downloaded (PDF; size: 6 MB) is: http://www.fao.org:80/forestry/fo/fra/docs/Wp55_eng.pdf Based on the country reports and the IFFN archive the FAO has put the most important fire information in the country profiles. Forestry and fire information can be navigated by country: http://www.fao.org/forestry/fo/country/nav_world.jsp Through a cooperative arrangement with the Global Fire Monitoring Center (GFMC) more country profiles will be added successively to the FAO website. Australia's Christmas Fires of 2001-2002 During the preparation of this IFFN issue Australia's Christmas Fires burned between end of December 2001 and mid of January 2002. Some media called this fire episode as Australia's "worst fire disaster in history." However, when the fires were terminated by rains by mid January 2002 the losses were less severe than anticipated. About 600,000 hectares had been affected by wildfires, a total of 120 houses burnt down, 3000 sheep were killed. These damages should