Rare species at risk from underground fires

A cycle of destruction triggered by underground coal fires which can burn for decades is threatening the last forest refuge of the some of the world's most endangered species, scientists said yesterday.

The orang-utan and the sun bear – the world's smallest bear – are the latest critically endangered animals to be caught in the devastation caused when new forest fires are ignited by far older fires in underground coal seams.

Scientists believe there are hundreds and possibly thousands of coal fires in the rainforests of Indonesia's East Kalimantan region, home to 15,000 of the estimated 20,000 orang-utans left in the world.

Alfred Whitehouse, the director of the Indonesian government's coal-fire project, told the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Denver that underground fires could wipe out the last habitat for critically threatened animals.

"Damage estimates based on satellite data and ground observations are that more then 5 million hectares burnt in East Kalimantan during the 1997-98 fires, pushing the already endangered orang-utans and sun bears closer to extinction," Dr Whitehouse said.

"Not only were the economic losses and ecological damage from these forest fires enormous, the fires ignited coal seams along their exposed outcrops. Unlike forest and peat fires, coal fires have persisted for decades smouldering underground unaffected by even torrential rain.

"The orang-utans are driven into smaller and smaller areas of forest. It was tragic. I was in a mining area and saw three orang-utans literally clinging to the last standing tree. Hundreds have been killed and those that do escape the fires find they have to move into areas of human population. They turn up in gardens and start eating out of dustbins, because it's the only food they can find."

Through the world, from the United States to China, underground fires are becoming an increasing problem as old coal mines and exposed outcrops catch fire, mostly as a direct or indirect result of human activity. "Coal fires occur where there is coal. So in every country where coal deposits occur there are coal fires," Dr Whitehouse said.

"On a global basis, they contribute large quantities of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere without providing any of the benefits from energy consumption. Coal fires remain a long-term source of ignition for new forest fires, perpetuating a destructive cycle."

Glenn Stracher, a mining expert from East Georgia College in Swainsboro, Georgia, said that in China alone 200 million tons of coal a year was consumed by underground fires. The amount of carbon dioxide these fires released into the atmosphere amounted to the total annual emission of all motor vehicles in the United States, he said. "Coal fires are a global catastrophe. People have been mining coal for a fuel for at least 1,000 years, and as the proliferation of the use of coal has increased, so have the number of coal fires. They have occurred because of spontaneous combustion or lightning, but it is the human factor that's increased the severity."

Coal outcrops and mines can sometimes spontaneously catch fire when fresh coal is exposed to oxygen. They are also easily ignited when people burn trees or rubbish near an exposed outcrops. One such fire is still burning in the American mining town of Centralia in Pennsylvania. It was caused when a rubbish tip concealing a coal outcrop was set alight in 1962 and the town had to be evacuated.

SUN BEAR

Smallest of all bears, at 4ft to 5ft long and 2ft high. They have a white or yellowish crescent-shaped patch on their chests, and live in fragmented populations in South-east Asia. Little is known about how many remain, but their number is declining due to disappearance of the rainforest

ORANG-UTAN

Found solely in Borneo and Sumatra. Up to 5ft 5ins tall, and covered in red-brown hair, the creature lives a mainly solitary, arboreal life, feeding chiefly on fruit. Now an endangered species, it is officially protected because its habitat is being destroyed by deforestation. Fewer than 20,000 remain