Fire season ended with no losses on our plots

A dry El Niño year put this part of Borneo on fire watch for months. The kind of year when a single careless fire can run for weeks and the haze closes airports two countries away. Going in, we expected to lose at least some of our planting blocks.

We lost none. Every one of our planting blocks came through the season intact, and that did not happen by chance.

The community fire crews cleared firebreaks before the dry set in, cutting and clearing strips of bare ground that a creeping fire cannot cross. They kept the water tanks stocked through the season and ran night patrols once the haze came in, because that is when fires start and spread unseen.

Two fires did start on neighbouring land and ran toward us. Both were stopped at our boundary, by crews who were already positioned and ready rather than scrambling after the fact. The difference between those fires reaching our trees and not was a rota of people who were paid to be watching.

The rewetted peat helped as much as the crews did. The 120-hectare block where we blocked the drainage canals last year now holds its water, and land that holds water does not carry fire. A fire that would once have crept across dry peat simply stopped at the wet ground.

The combination of wet ground and watchful, paid people is what got us through the worst fire year since we started here. Neither would have been enough alone. We are not assuming the next El Niño will go the same way, and the crews are already planning next year's firebreaks.