Illegal timber used in Aceh

Nani Afrida, The Jakarta Post, Banda Aceh

Aid agencies were using illegally felled timber to reconstruct tsunami-hit Aceh and putting the province's protected forests at risk, a foreign environmentalist says.

"To prevent a bigger disaster in Aceh, illegal logging must be stopped," Frank Momberg of Flora and Fauna Indonesia (FFI) said on Tuesday.

Momberg was speaking on the sidelines of Green Conference and Expo in Banda Aceh. Started on Tuesday, the three-day event is discussing how to reach an environmentally friendly Aceh reconstruction policy and is being attended by foreign and domestic donors and environmentalists.

Momberg said the disaster had increased the demand for logs for houses and in road construction, leading to widespread illegal logging in the province.

Before the tsunami swept through Aceh on Dec. 26 last year, 31 companies had obtained government logging licenses and now the number had risen to 47.

He said that the FFI had conducted an investigation and found evidence that hundreds of houses under construction in the Lamno area, Aceh Jaya, were being built by using timber logged from the province's national park.

Momberg believed that non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and foreign donors were not involved in the illegal logging and had no idea on where the timber came from. However, some NGOs had ceased house construction and were waiting for legal timber taken from outside Aceh, he said.

The illegal logging was deplorable as it could cause more environmental disasters such as flooding or landslides, he said. Last April, flooding and landslides in Southeast Aceh regency killed 13 people.

Nurul Ikhsan, a local environmentalist, said he had received reports of many more trucks in Aceh's protected forests recently. "Every day, between 15 and 20 trucks carrying logs are seen driving in the forests," Nurul said.

Illegal logging to meet the demand for building materials was occurring in South Aceh, West Aceh, Gayo Luwes regency, and even as far as Gunung Leuser National Park, Nurul said.

According to government data, Aceh's reconstruction needs at least five million cubic meters of wood.