Putting a brake on wildfire

The huge fires that burned in Borneo in the early 1980s rang alarm bells among tropical forest managers and fire experts. Moist tropical forests, once thought immune to devastating wildfire, were going up in smoke, with huge negative effects on human health and forest sustainability.

Heavy rains finally extinguished the fires, and ITTO launched a programme aimed at encouraging integrated, community-based approaches to tropical forest fire management.