Rain forest firefighters race to the rescue at the ends of the earth

TWO TEAMS of firefighters and environmental experts are this week flying to opposite ends of the earth to tackle an unprecedented threat to the world's rain forests.

The teams set out for Indonesia and Brazil as new reports show that the crisis is increasing in both countries. A wall of fire is advancing into the Brazilian rain forest on a 250-mile-wide front, and there are fears that the Indonesian catastrophe - where over 1,000 fires are blazing, will spread into the sea.

The newly-appointed global fireman - Professor Klaus Topfer, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme - is in Geneva to brief UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and the heads of all UN agencies on what he describes as a "nightmare". He will then fly out to Indonesia himself for top-level talks on the disaster.

New reports indicate that the conflagrations - caused by man-made fires set to clear land - are already shaping up to be much worse than those in East Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of Borneo, last autumn, which burned more than 1.7 million acres of forest, enveloped six countries in choking smog and released as much carbon dioxide - the main cause of global warming - as Europe emits in an entire year.

Latest satellite photographs show 1,043 fires have already broken out this year in Borneo and are spreading through one of the world's most ecologically rich areas, thought to be home to one tenth of all the world's species. A blanket of smog the size of Britain now shrouds half of Borneo. Thousands have fallen ill in the city of Samarinda on the east coast of the giant island, and fires have also broken out in Sumatra, Malaysia and Thailand.

Traditionally in crisis the people turn to the sea for food, but there are disturbing signs that the disaster is spreading there too. The intense fires have even burned mangroves, which grow out of the water and are the most important nurseries for young fish.

Coral reefs - the other vital areas for fish - are dying, probably as a result of changes in temperature brought about by the El Nino climatic effect, which is also behind the drought. And experts fear that the acid ash that now coats the burnt areas will both suffocate and dissolve reefs when rain washes it from the land.

Across the world in Brazil, about two-and-a-half million acres of savannah woodland has already been incinerated; a fifth of the Amazonian state of Roraima has burned. UN officials say that a "concentrated conflagration" 250 miles in length is now advancing north-east into the rain forest, and has already penetrated 18 miles into a reserve of the Yanomami Indians.

The Brazilian authorities delayed tackling the fires for three months, and repeatedly refused UN offers for help. But now, like Indonesia, it has accepted. The UN teams will visit the conflagrations and report back on how to attack them. There will be a meeting of firefighting experts in Geneva next month to discuss ways of putting out the blazes, immediately followed by a meeting of rich countries and international agencies to try to mobilise the funds to do it.