RI's rain forests may vanish

RI's rain forests may vanish

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Illegal logging that has swept through forest areas and national
parks across the archipelago has reached an alarming level,
having a serious impact on locals and the ecosystem.

Thousands of farmers in border areas between Aceh and North
Sumatra and between South Tapanuli and Riau are now afraid to
farm their land after herds of wild elephants ran amok,
ransacking hundreds of hectares of farmland following the
destruction of big trees in their own habitat.

Residents of Nias Island, North Sumatra and Belu, East Nusa
Tenggara, are still traumatized from the tragedy that claimed
hundreds of lives early this year when flash flooding swept
through low lands after forests in the regions' upper areas were
looted by illegal loggers for years.

Dozens of motorized carts have transported almost every day
hundreds of cubic meters of timber from the Leuser National Park
in South Aceh to small North Sumatra towns bordering the restive
province.

According to locals living near the park, the forest looting
has lasted for several years, aided and abetted by the duplicity
of local security authorities.

"Many people, especially Acehnese refugees, have taken jobs
cutting down big trees in the park and supplying them to sawmills
operating in the borderlines," Abdurrahman, a local resident,
said recently.

Abdurrahman, also a civil servant said the Leuser Management,
who is responsible for supervising the park's conservation
program could do nothing to curb the illegal logging because it
was backed up by hoodlums and the authorities.

The illegal logging has not only taken place in production
forests but also in government designated protected forests,
national parks and natural conservation areas which are found in
almost all provinces.

Despite strong protests from local and international entities
and environmental forums, including the recent Sustainable
Development Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, old growth
forest area continues a rapid and steady decline from year to
year, destroying ecosystems that took tens of thousands of years
to mature and cannot be replicated by simple reclamation, even if
it was being implemented in the affected areas, which it is not.

Forests in Aceh have decreased drastically to 5.5 million
hectares in 1997 from nine million in 1991 while those in North
Sumatra have diminished to four million hectares in 2000 from 5.3
million in 1991.

Illegal logging has severed the people from the environment
that has been their provider and keeper for thousands of years.

Hundreds of villages and towns, located in the low lands have
been hit by flooding and landslides during the rainy season and
their residents have now experienced difficulty in obtaining
clean water during the dry seasons, beginning in 1999.

The supply of electricity in Aceh, North Sumatra, South
Sumatra and Lampung has been threatened following the breakdown
of a number of hydropower plants in the provinces. Several plants
were rendered operable after being hit by floods while several
others have had to forcibly cease operations as a result of
diminished water supplies.

So far, rolling blackouts have been imposed in regions in
Lampung and South Sumatra because of the affected hydropower
plants in Way Kambas since March of this year. Similar events
have also transpired in Sulawesi and state-owned PLN has turned
to geothermal and coal energy to supply electricity to its
consumers.

Despite these alarming conditions, no concrete steps have been
taken by the government to curtail the illegal logging.

The Jambi Provincial Police has seized this month more than
4,000 cubic meters of log which is believed to have been looted
from the Kerinci Seblat National Park (TNKS), however so far
nobody has been brought to court following the investigation of a
number of sawmills and transportation firms where the logs were
seized.

Several regents in West Sumatra have given up trying to deal
with the illegal logging in the province because it is supported
by security personnel and councillors.

Sinjunjung Regent Darius Apan said each time the local
authorities launched anti-illegal logging operations, it was
leaked to forest looters and many people allegedly paid by timber
businessmen staged demonstrations in the legislative council
building to protest the operation.

He cited a total of 238 hectares of rainforest in the regency
that had been looted since Jan. 2002 and are now left barren.

According to data obtained from the local office of the
National Resources Conservation Agency, a total of more than
7,500 of 379,000 hectares of the TNKS in the province were
deforested over the last two years.

Areas of Batam, an industrial area bordering Malaysia and
Singapore, are facing a clean water crisis as a result of the
intensive destruction of primary rainforest for the development
of illegal houses, an expensive commodity on the island.

"Batam will be facing a complete clean water crisis in 2005
due to the rapid economic development and population growth,"
Antara Zulfakar, a senior staff of the local environmental
management agency (Bapedalda) said recently.

He said 40 years will be needed to regreen 4,400 hectares of
forest already laid barren for illegal housing development over
the last several years.

This is a stopgap measure that will only relieve some of the
flooding and soil erosion. It will not replace the old--growth
forest ecosystem.

Forest and security authorities have confiscated thousands of
cubic meters of illegal logs in Bengkulu, Cirebon, West Java,
West and East Nusa Tenggara and arrested a number of individuals
suspected of being responsible for the illegal logging but only
several were brought to court and only one found guilty of
stealing hardwood in Cirebon was punished.

Adj. Sr. Comr. Toha Suharto, chief of the Rejang Lebong Police
in Bengkulu, said the police have arrested four sawmill owners
and two villagers for looting at TNKS but only one was convicted
and sentenced to two years imprisonment while the other three
were acquitted of all charges due to lack of evidence.

He said that the central government, security authorities and
regencies should go to the negotiating table to discuss concrete
joint actions to be taken to curb the illegal logging.

"The illegal logging has been rampant because of the weakening
law enforcement and poor judiciary system. And so far, no logging
businessmen, security personnel or government officials have been
punished for their involvement in the illegal logging.