Jakarta: Satellite data has shown that forest and land fires this year mostly burned idle land, peatlands or former forests, strengthening the case for the mass reforestation of degraded peatlands, a research institute said.
“While there has been much speculation in the news that the heavy fire season has taken a toll on the country’s remaining rainforests, there was no hard evidence to support that notion, ” said David Gaveau, a landscape ecologist and research associate at the Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) in Bogor, Indonesia.