A tree sustains the lives of many

Indonesia's forests fall into various categories; from the evergreen Dipterocarpaceae lowland forests of Sumatra and Kalimantan and the monsoon forests and savannas of the islands of Nusa Tenggara, to the alpine expanses of Papua. Each forest is unique.

Indonesia is also home to the world's vastest mangrove forests, which in the early 1990s covered 4.25 million hectares of area.

Among the world's richest in biodiversity, the forests are a haven for 11 percent of the world's plant species (biodiversity), 10 percent of its mammals, 17 percent of its reptiles and amphibians and 16 percent of the world's bird species. The number could be higher considering that there has yet to be thorough biodiversity mapping.

As the forests are quickly disappearing, their inhabitants are near extinction, closing the opportunity to explore the country's, or maybe the world's, most magnificent natural wonders still untouched deep in the forests.

But that is not all. According to a 1999 Ministry of Forestry report, about 30 million people "have a direct dependency on the forests", while many more use forest plants for traditional medicines or to collect honey, rattan or resin for a living.

The forests also protect river basins that provide water to people. Unfortunately, according to a 2001 report by Forest Watch Indonesia (FWI) and the Global Forest Watch, an estimated 20 percent of the forest preserves around five of the largest river basins in the country had disappeared between 1985 and 1997.

Indonesia's forests produce 14 billion tons of biomass which roughly contains 3.5 billion tons of carbon. But forest exploitation has discharged the carbon, and this has contributed to global warming.

The value of the forests cannot be measured by rupiah. But once a tree is felled, it takes down many lives with it.

-- Tertiani Z.B. Simanjuntak