Province needs more forest rangers

SAMARINDA, East Kalimantan: An official says the province needs 2,540 more rangers to effectively protect its 21,144,000 hectares of forest from fires and illegal logging.

The province also needs 5,000 guards.

Antara quoted H. Syahranie of the local forestry office as saying yesterday that currently there are only 460 rangers, each of them responsible for 5,000 hectares of forest.

According to 1995 spatial planning, 70 percent of the forests here are considered "permanent forests", which includes permanent production forests, limited production forest, protected forests and forests for tourism. (swe)