Introduction to the fire hazard and need for forest protection

c) Agro or multipurpose Forestry: Confined to Town and amenity plantings and nurse crops for cocoa and coffee in agriculture (Later to be expanded in the period of this report). 9. Long Term Research;(a) District (now provincial) Arboretum and species trials. (b)

Provenance trial (Teak and Kamarere). (C) Progeny trials (Teak). (d) Seed Production areas (Teak and Kamarere). (e)Seed tree selections and grafting (Teak, Kamarere). (f)

Clonal seed orchards (Teak, Kamarere) 10. Forestry Education. (Bulolo Forestry College and at Lae University of technology)

The Objectives concurrent with all the above were to educate and train students to establish and manage a nationwide forestry service forest and academic institution system capable of maintaining the sustainability, development, and conservation, of its national natural forest diversity and plantation forest resources and service, in perpetuity. The University of Technology Forestry Department came into being around 1975 under Dr. John Davidson as head of that department. It was non-existent at the time I arrived at Bulolo.

Introduction to the Fire Hazard and Need for Forest Protection.

Fire is very much part of the PNG environment and lighting fires would appear to be very much a traditional past time. Throughout I was to find fire was a serious inhibitor to progress. It has always been a tool to ancient peoples through to these times of entering the modern world but needed to be controlled without which it was a widespread social headache to forestry development, research, and forest as well as Biosphere conservation. It was in this first month of mine that the Bulolo and Wau forestry plantations experienced their first forest fire. It started on the 22nd of October 1965. We spotted it while Mr. Bert Gloynes was showing me around the Golden Pines area. A single tall plume of white smoke rising from a plantation which had a labour line working tending Hoop pine, exactly where that smoke should not have been. according to Bert. We found the plantation well alight on the spot where the labour line was working. This fire was to extend into November/December of 1965. Forestry mustered all the labour line it could get in a short time and we split into fire control parties. My party cut and hoed a clear break along the top of the ridge near where it was started, but below us someone decided to add a back burn except the wind was blowing strong in our direction which was the wrong way, so I had my face scorched and eyebrows burnt. During this time, the Company Plywood mill had shut down and added men to our group of fire fighters. I managed to convey to my crew to bolt down the opposite side of the ridge, away from the fire and blinding smoke to travel up to the access road at the top. We all had runny noses and eyes by this time and my command of pidgin English was horrible. and making it a bit difficult for me to communicate when it was needed in a hurry. Only the Boss boy decided to hang on and no amount of yelling and waving would make him move. I was separated from in him in the fire and smoke, so I joined the rest of the party at the road above. Eventually we were joined by the boss boy who was most unhappy that I had left him behind. He had buried himself under a log and fire passed over him. That was eventually sorted out. My ability to communicate needed to improve. I cannot recall how much plantation was lost but it was substantial. What we learnt here was that, where bamboo grew around and sloping fire breaks were made, that fires were difficult to control. Bamboo exploded like ordinance and its burning leaves carried fire long distance and the fire dived under our breaks and just burnt underground amongst dry root peat and the boulders of accumulated dried material and by passed us. It was everyone is first experience with el Nino and the dry condition of the environment. In the 1972 fires which started in Wau, we met with an added hazard of exploding ammunition lost in the bush from WWII. Many of us thought it was bamboo burning. That is another story. The main