Man-made disasters

The tragedy at Bukit Lawang will not be an isolated incident if something drastic is not done to curb the deforestation in Indonesia now.

The Sumatran Orangutan Society (SOS), an NGO connected to the Bahorok Orangutan Center since 1994 has been working tirelessly to highlight the rapidity and dangers of forest degradation in Leuser. Recent figures from Conservation International indicate that Indonesia is losing an area of forest equivalent to the size of six football fields a minute.

Every minute, every hour, every day! World Bank surveys predict that at current rates there will be no lowland forest left in Sumatra after 2005. The people who have lost their lives have paid a high price for the unchecked illegal logging and subsequent effects of deforestation. Let their deaths not be in vain and the Indonesian government wake up to the real situation and clamp down effectively on illegal logging.

Furthermore, we would ask the government to halt an ill- conceived project, the construction of a network of roads known as "Ladia Galaska", currently proposed. The roads cut through protected and forest areas in the same Leuser ecosystem. It is nothing short of an act of environmental vandalism and will undoubtedly have similar catastrophic effects. With international attention being focused on the Bukit Lawang tragedy, let the lesson of conserving our planet be learned.

LUCY WISDOM Founding Director Sumatran Orangutan Society Bali