World Bank supports Kazakhstan in protecting its vital forests

That's why the saplings, seed laboratories and firefighters in Semey, Kazakhstan, are so important. Semey, in the eastern part of the country, sits next to the Irtysh Pine Forest, nearly 700,000 hectares of fragile, yet important, land, the World Bank Kazakhstan official website reads. "The biggest part of this project is the money spent on new firefighting equipment, to cut down on illegal logging, and to detect lightning strikes," says Murat Baimukhametov, who is working with the World Bank to help re-plant and restore the forest. The most revolutionary part of the project moves fire detection from the casual glance to a state-of-the-art computer system. Technicians now monitor the forest via computer, looking for lightning strikes, smoke, or any activity out of the ordinary. The system relies on a series of cameras mounted on watchtowers and sprinkled throughout the forest. What it means is that firefighters can respond to trouble with greater speed and accuracy than in the recent past, explains Vladimir Kurmangaliyev, who works at the forestry fire station. "The new equipment allows us to move more quickly, and once we get to the fire, we can deploy faster."

New trucks, helicopters, gear and tools are also crucial to the effort. And, during the dry months from April to November, the risk is high. A fire nearly ten years ago burned 20 percent of the forest, and the burnt land is still, slowly, recovering, though even now it contains very few mature trees. "After the collapse of the Soviet Union," says Jumagali Sagadiyev, of the Semey Forest Nature Preserve, "because of the fires, we lost 160,000 hectares of fires. That's 20 percent of the total forestland." For full version go to