Lampung reserve to evict squatters

Lampung reserve to evict squatters

Oyos Saroso H.N., The Jakarta Post, Bandarlampung

Up to 15,600 squatter families living in semi-permanent homes and
cultivating crops inside the Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park
(TNBBS) will soon be removed from the forest. Meanwhile, tens of
thousands of squatter homes are set to be demolished by TNBBS
forest rangers assisted by police from West Lampung and Tanggamus
regencies.

The management of the park says it has no option but to remove
the squatters due to the increasing level of forest destruction
in the area. The squatters have not only felled mature trees
meranti, tenam and mahogany trees, but have also cleared land for
the cultivation of coffee, pepper, cacao, cassava and rice.

The director of the park's conservation body, Tamen Sitorus,
disclosed that the park was now in a worrying state due to the
increasing number of squatter families. He said that there were
15,177 houses in the park as of August 2004, but that the figure
had now reached 15,600 houses occupied by the same number of
families.

The park management would attempt to remove the squatters by
offering financial and social inducements. "We will find other
places for them and improve their living conditions," said Tamen.

The 350,000-hectare park stretches from West Lampung and
Tanggamus regencies in Lampung province to Kaur regency in
Bengkulu.

The worst affected areas are in Sekincau, Suoh and Rantaagung,
bordering on Bengkulu province. According to park data, the
damaged area extended to 52,000 hectares.

However, data given by the Lampung chapter of the Indonesian
Forum for the Environment (Walhi) states that around 50 percent
of the park has been damaged, while data from the Lampung Forest
Conservation Consortium (KKHL) says that 60 percent of the park
has been damaged.

KKHL director Watoni Nurdin said that forest destruction in
the park was the result of the government's earlier policy of
issuing community use permits (HKM).

According to Watoni, the HKM program had been used as an
excuse by residents to occupy forest buffer zones.

He cited as an example the issuance of forest management
rights under the program in Tanggamus. After six farm groups in
Tanggamus, West Lampung and South Lampung regencies were given
rights to manage forest areas within the Bukit Barisan Selatan
National Park in March, 2001, some 4,000 families demanded
similar rights to over 10,510 hectares of land which they had
occupied.

Contrary to the views of the non-governmental organization
(NGO) activists, Tamen Sitorus said that illegal logging in West
Lampung was due to the issuance of concessions (IPKTM) to private
logging firms by the local forestry office.

According to Muhyan, the local forestry office had arbitrarily
issued IPKTM permits to residents, whereas in fact most of the
residents have no more hardwood trees left on their land. By
holding on to their IPKTM permits, they can easily continue to
supply timber to sawmills.

"The timber supplied to sawmills is undoubtedly illegal and
without doubt comes from protected forests and the national park
because nobody has land with hardwood trees on it in West Lampung
anymore," said Sitorus.

However, the head of the West Lampung Forestry Office,
Warsito, denied that his office had issued the permits
arbitrarily. He said that before a permit was issued, his office
would conduct a prior survey.

Separately, environmental activist Joko Santoso said that tens
of millions of cubic meters of illegal sawn timber were channeled
out of Lampung and other provinces in Sumatra to Java through
Merak Port in Banten.

The illegal timber was usually transported by large trucks
equipped with processed timber and log transportation documents.

Most of the meranti timber was derived from illegal logging,
considering that Lampung has banned the export of such timber to
other areas.

According to Joko, the state was suffering losses of trillions of rupiah
per month due to the illegal shipments of meranti, bearing in
mind that such timber could fetch between Rp 750,000 and Rp 1
million per cubic meter on the open market.