Man-made disasters

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