Coral reefs

Thank you for your article about WWF Wallacea in The Jakarta Post, June 21, 2001, Page 9: Campaign pulls in the public to save endangered coral reefs. We hope the articles can raise people's awareness about coral reefs and their conservation.

However, there are some statements that we think needed to be clarified to give a better description about our program:

1. The Word Wide Fund (WWF) office in Bali is WWF Indonesia Wallacea Bioregion. We are carrying out a conservation program in the Wallacea bioregion (up to the North of Sulawesi and as far as Banda-Flores Sea). Thus our goal is not only to cover the conservation of Bali's precious coral reefs, as written in the article, but also the entire bioregion's.

2. Friends of the Reef (FoR) program includes a site-based co- management project in the pilot sites (currently at West Bali National Park) and coral awareness program. FoR, particularly the co-management project, is a program developed in a cooperative way with the stakeholders (park authorities, NGOs, local communities, the private sector, science institutions and local governments). Thus, it is not purely a WWF Wallacea program, but a program developed and built in cooperation with relevant stakeholders. WWF Wallacea plays an active role, particularly as a facilitator.

3. Referring to the information mentioned above, the FoR program coordinator position is not available within WWF Wallacea Management structure. Dewi Satriani is our coral campaign communications officer.

4. The FoR launch was on Earth Day (April 22, 2001) when for two days reef check monitoring was carried out (not in May). Serial activities of the launch were also carried out in several other places beside Bali, such as: a drawing competition in Padang, and reef checks in Bunaken (North Sulawesi), Derawan (East Kalimantan) and Taka Bone Rate (South Sulawesi). We did another reef check on July 17 in which Nugie was involved.

5. The data mentioned in the article was based on the 2000 Reef Check monitoring activities, not the latest data we gathered from the launching scheme.

6. We did not conduct underwater cleanup activities during the launching. Many institutions in Bali have been aware of or concerned about the reefs and developed their own conservation initiatives that coincided with the launching of our FoR program.

Let's be friends of the reef!

NANENG SETIASIH

Coral Campaign Leader

WWF Indonesia Wallacea Bioregion

Denpasar, Bali