Charred Footprints | TEMPO TEMPO Interactive, Jakarta The Tripa
peat swamp, one with the largest capacity to store carbon in
Aceh, is near complete ruin. Investigations carried out by a
joint team continue to scour for criminal violations that
destroyed the once rich peatland forest. IN the middle of a
vast, burned down forest littered with charred, blackened tree
trunks, Basuki Wasis instructs one of his staffers to stick a
pipe into the ground. One enters right through and stops at a
meter deep. A second and then a third pipe sinks easily into the
swamp land. The fourth sinks, and then stops at just forty
centimeters deep. After taking ground samples, Basuki records
his findings in a pocket notebook – this was land with peat
layers of 3.6 meters deep. “This is evidence of a violation
committed via planting on peatland,” Basuki told Tempo, who
accompanied the researcher from the Bogor Agricultural Institute
during the drilling of pipes into the burned swamp land two
weeks ago. On this burned land controlled