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View all search resultsPolice monitor wildfire areas to prevent illegal land conversion
Police have ramped up postfire monitoring to ensure that unscrupulous actors or uninformed residents do not exploit burnt land for cultivating cash crops, including oil palm.
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Police officers douse a peatland fire on Aug. 25, 2026, in Tambang district, Kampar regency, Riau. (AFP/Wahyudi)
P
olice in Riau are ramping up supervision of areas scorched by blazes to prevent their being turned into oil palm plantations by unscrupulous parties, as rain in the past few days have helped extinguish wildfires.
Riau Police chief spokesman Sr. Comr. Akmadi said handling forest and peatland fires, also known by the portmanteau karhutla, did not stop when they had been extinguished, emphasizing land monitoring as part of a sustainable strategy.
“We want to ensure that there is no loophole for certain parties to reap benefits by violating regulations after an area is burned,” Akmadi said on Monday.
“After the fire is doused, we still monitor the land to prevent planting, so that the karhutla handling cycle is not broken.”
He added that the message was simple: Burning should not be a cheap way to clear land.
According to Akmadi, many locations that had been affected by fire, especially in forest areas in Riau, had signs forbidding land cultivation and other activities.
The Riau Police had installed the warning signs after the fires in 2025 to indicate that the areas remained under police observation.
