National Park not destroyed!

National Park not destroyed!

We wish to clarify, in response to your Jan. 9, 2002 article
"Gunung Palung National Park in West Kalimantan destroyed, that
Gunung Palung is still there! The reporting is based on excellent
field research by a Harvard University-affiliated team of
foresters, and contains important points concerning the tragic
economics of illegal logging at this beleaguered Park.

However, the article makes its point too strongly in saying
that Gunung Palung is "destroyed". This sort of statement is
dangerous -- for if it had actually been destroyed, if truly "it
is hard to find an orangutan in the park now," why should we care
anymore?

For the past several years we have been conducting ecological
research, including an orangutan population census, at Gunung
Palung National Park. The situation is indeed grim. However, the
Park is not yet a wasteland. Although it is true that roughly
two-thirds of Gunung Palung has been degraded by illegal logging,
it has not been utterly clear-cut: These disturbed patches still
have high conservation value.

Gunung Palung National Park remains a vitally important
sanctuary for wildlife, and, provided that it is protected from
further disturbance, will continue to support one of the few
remaining viable orangutan populations in the world. Logging has
not rendered Gunung Palung worthless. It is a final "postage
stamp" of Kalimantan's once vast and unbelievably diverse lowland
rainforest -- a forest that elsewhere has mostly been converted
into a sea of oil palm and human development. This National Park
is one of the last places that can and does support a full
complement of native Kalimantan fauna, and as such it still
deserves our strongest conservation efforts.

Let's not write off Gunung Palung, and the rest of this
country's forests, as "destroyed". Let's not convince the public
that there are no orangutans left, when the fact is there still
are and, if Indonesia acts now, there always will be.

ANDREA E. JOHNSON

and ANDREW J.MARSHALL

Department of Anthropology

Harvard University

Boston, Massachusetts

USA