Gunung Palung National Park in W. Kalimantan destroyed

Gunung Palung National Park in W. Kalimantan destroyed

Edi Petebang
The Jakarta Post
Pontianak

Recent surveys conducted by Harvard University's Laboratory of
Tropical Forest Ecology have found that more than 61,000 hectares
of the 90,000-hectare Gunung Palung National Park in the regency
of Ketapang, West Kalimantan, have been destroyed over the last
ten years.

"The illegal logging and other kinds of destruction have
inflicted total losses of US$345 million, or more than Rp 3
trillion," Eko Darmawan, the leader of the survey team, said on
Monday.

The surveys, sponsored by Harvard University, were conducted
between July and November of last year. The survey team members
consisted of local and foreign experts.

More than six million cubic meters of logs were found to have
been stolen from the 61,200 hectares that had been cleared by
illegal loggers, meaning that an average of 101 cubic meters of
logs had been stolen from each hectare of forest, he said.

"The team members went along 13 rivers and found 252 sites
where illegally obtained logs were stacked before being
transported out of the park. Ninety-five of the sites were still
being used, and 43 of these were large-scale in nature. We also
found three exit routes for illegal logs," said Eko, a forestry
expert.

"The first exit route is the river Laur, which leads to
Ketapang. The second is the river Matan which provides access to
many areas, including Melano and Batang bays, and the city of
Pontianak. The third exit route is the Semanai river, which leads
directly to the South China Sea," he said.

Redo, one of the surveyors, said the team had concluded that
at least 20 components were involved in the illegal logging and
distribution chain.

"The most important component is the financial backers known
as cukong. What is very interesting is the fact that the loggers
always end up indebted to the cukong. Thus, they can do nothing
but cut the trees so as to get the money to repay their debts,"
Redo said. "The cukong also control the price of the logs."

According to Redo, the cukong include businessmen living
outside Ketapang and Ketapang administration officials.

Now that the protected forest in the park had been so brutally
destroyed, many species of fauna had disappeared from the area.
"It's hard to find an orangutan in the park now," Redo said.