Even if they escape the chainsaw, Indonesia鈥檚 embattled tropical forests face a serious threat from drought-induced fires. That鈥檚 the conclusion of researchers who have been monitoring fire-damaged plots in the south of Sumatra.
Margaret Kinnaird of the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York and her colleagues began studying the tropical rainforest of the Bukit Barisan Selatan national park in 1997. That year, a severe El Ni帽o 鈥� a warming of the eastern Pacific Ocean 鈥� brought intense drought and fires to the region.
By studying the year-by-year recovery of these plots 鈥� some of which had also been burned in an earlier El Ni帽o in 1982 鈥� Kinnaird and her colleagues developed a model describing how the forest regenerates. This shows that if El Ni帽os matching the 1997 event occur twice a decade, the prospects are dim: a 46 per cent loss of forest cover over the next century, Kinnaird told the Society for Conservation Biology鈥檚 meeting in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, last week.
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Unfortunately, El Ni帽os seem to be getting more frequent and severe, so this is plausible. Protecting the forests is possible, says Kinnaird. 鈥淏ut you鈥檝e got to have good fire management. Indonesia doesn鈥檛 have that.鈥�
