Japanese telecom firm KDDI apologizes after fire ravages Mongolia's protected reserve

KDDI, a Japanese telecommunications corporation, has expressed remorse for a forest fire that broke out on October 8 in the Numrug Strictly Protected Area of eastern Mongolia’s Dornod province. The blaze started when more than ten Mobicom staff, including Yasuhiro Ochi, entered the reserve by vehicle, allegedly to test a 4G communications network, and a vehicle caught fire. The fire spread across over 520,000 hectares, destroying roughly 80 % of the protected landscape, and was finally extinguished on October 16.

Mongolian authorities have pledged to hold those responsible legally and to pursue compensation, while the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change launched a comprehensive ecological impact assessment. KDDI maintains that the team had official permission and followed a predetermined route, but it declined to comment further pending the investigation’s outcome.