Community-based national park to curb illegal logging in Sumatra
Community-based national park to curb illegal logging in Sumatra
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
President Megawati Soekarnoputri is scheduled on Friday to
inaugurate the Batang Gadis National Park, Mandailing Natal
regency, North Sumatra, a model community-based park that
exemplifies the government's efforts to curb illegal logging.
Jatna Supriyatna, the regional vice president of Conservation
International (CI) Indonesia, said Batang Gadis was a bottom-up
national park, because it had the full support of Mandialing
residents, who had requested it be established.
He said the request was triggered primarily by the trauma
following the flooding at Bukit Lawang resort in the neighboring
regency, Langkat, in November 2003, which killed over 140 people.
The local government accepted a demand from 30,000 people
living along the banks of the Batang Gadis River, who went to the
regent's office after the disaster to ask for the designation of
108,000 hectares of forest near the river as a national park,
Jatna said.
Many environmentalists and the local administration have
blamed the natural disaster in Langkat on illegal logging in
Mount Leuser National Park.
"In many cases, the illegal logging in conservation areas or
national parks occurred because the local administration didn't
allow residents to benefit from the areas," Jatna said on the
sidelines of a presentation on the biodiversity of Batang Gadis
at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) recently.
Data from the Ministry of Forestry in 2003 shows that about 43
million hectares of a total of 120.3 million hectares of forest
have lost productivity due to illegal forest exploitation, with
the forest degradation rate at more than 2 million hectares per
year.
Jatna said that the management of the national park would
improve the prosperity of residents by developing agroforestry
for coffee, silkworm breeding and other agricultural products.
"We have already established cooperation with the
international Starbucks chain. The company will buy Arabica
Mandialing coffee from residents at premium prices, especially if
it is organic (cultivated without using pesticides or chemical
fertilizers).
According to a biodiversity survey carried out from Feb. 2 to
March 20, Batang Gadis park has 228 different types of flora per
0.2 hectare of land -- richer than the Amazon forest in South
America, which has fewer than 200.
The survey team also discovered a new type of Rafflesia"?
flower, the padma. The flower is currently being studied by
experts at the LIPI Biology Research Center.