Mega calls for logging moratorium

KUTA, Bali: President Megawati Soekarnoputri called on Sunday for a temporary moratorium on logging to avoid excessive exploitation of the country's forests, the overall area of which has decreased by between 1.7 million and two million hectares annually over the past 10 years.

"We must give our forests a chance to take a breath," Megawati said at the opening of a two-day national meeting of the Association of Indonesian Forest Concessionaires (APHI) in Kuta, Bali, on Sunday.

"Are we going to preserve our forests, to give them back their life, or are we going to let them be exploited until they are fully destroyed?" said Megawati.

Indonesia lost, on average, some 1.5 million hectares of forests each year between 1985 and 1997. By the beginning of 2000, Indonesia's forests had been reduced to a mere 20 million hectares, down from pre-1985 levels of nearly 43 million hectares. --JP