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.