RI's biodiversity not being exploited

BOGOR (JP): Indonesia hosts one of the most complex and rich biodiversities in the world with 4,000 types of trees, a wide range of flowering plants as well as species of apes, reptiles, amphibians and mammals, a minister said on Wednesday.

"But the sad part is that only a small part of that biodiversity is being utilized," Minister of Forestry and Plantations Nur Mahmudi Ismail said here hours before his appointment as Junior Minister of Forestry in the line-up of the new Cabinet announced by President Abdurrahman Wahid later in the day.

"Most of it is wasted due to lack of knowledge," he said.

The main target of forest development is to rehabilitate forests and plantations damaged in the exploitation process and at the same time lift people's welfare, Nur Mahmudi said.

Speaking at a national seminar on biodiversity at the Research Center for Food Plants in Bogor, the minister also said the improvement of the genetic quality of food plants is the key to boosting the existing forest and plantation productivity. (21/edt)