Habibie seeks review of forestry policies

Habibie seeks review of forestry policies

JAKARTA (JP): President B.J. Habibie on Thursday sought a
review of government policies on the exploitation of forests,
which he said had so far benefited only certain groups.

"In this reform era, we have to review our policies on forest
exploitation (to protect) public interests," he said at the
commemoration of National Natural Conservation and Reforestation
Day.

Deforestation occurs when people want to exploit forests
without regard of the nation's future, he said as quoted by
Antara. "Self-interest has been put above public interest, and
this often harms the people."

Careless policy, he said, caused serious damage to the
country's forest reserves while it took hundreds of years for
damaged forests to recover.

Meanwhile the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Indonesia
called on the government on Thursday to rein in timber companies
and stop conversion of its remaining natural forests into
agricultural land for oil palm and other plantations.

The move was needed to save the world's last remaining
orangutans and other endangered species, the conservation group
said in a statement.

It said the 1997/1998 forest fires had caused Indonesia's
forests to shrink at an unsustainable rate. With some 5.5 million
hectares of Sumatra and Kalimantan earmarked for palm oil
plantations, and another 24.5 million hectares of Eastern
Indonesia earmarked for conversion, "the government must now act
to protect remaining forests and concentrate plantation
development solely on land already genuinely degraded by fires or
other causes," the body said in the statement.

The 1997/98 fires that ravaged up to 10 million hectares of
Kalimantan and Sumatra, were largely caused by an opening up of
forest areas by plantation companies and a resulting influx of
people.

Poor land use planning, poor forest management by timber
concessions, and badly controlled burning for land clearing and
during the El Nino drought conditions all contributed to the
disaster, WWF said.

The fires and resulting haze, which cost Indonesia and
neighboring countries an estimated US$4.5 billion and brought
massive dislocation to much of Southeast Asia, left vast tracts
of degraded land. The most degraded of this land could be used
for oil palm and other plantation estates, which are crucial
export earners for Indonesia's economy, the WWF said.

The approach, which would involve major changes in government
land allocation practices, both at national and provincial
levels, could spell survival for orangutans and other endangered
species pushed to the brink of extinction by the loss of their
rainforest habitat.

"Even before the 1997 fires, orangutan habitat in Indonesia
and Malaysia declined by an estimated 80 percent in the 1970s and
1980s," the group said in its statement.

"Some 40 percent of the 1997/98 Kalimantan fires occurred in
areas with orangutan populations," the WWF said.