Save our national forests

Almost two weeks since the tragedy that hit North Sumatra, the flash flood that swept away much of the resort town of Bukit Lawang in Bahorok is still on everybody's lips. For good reason, too.

By any measure, the Bahorok deluge was a disaster of major proportions. At least 125 people, including several foreign tourists, died in the catastrophe, while hundreds more went missing and more than 400 families were left homeless. The greatest tragedy, however, was that most Indonesians felt the Bahorok disaster was one that could have been avoided.

An investigation conducted by the Leuser Management Unit (LMU) found that the rampant deforestation over the past several years at Gunung Leuser National Park, Langkat regency -- where the resort was located -- was the root cause of the disaster. An LMU spokesman said some 42,000 hectares of the park, located about 50 kilometers above Bukit Lawang resort, had been turned into barren land, mostly due to illegal logging. This finding was verified by a forestry expert at the Bogor Institute of Agriculture (IPB), Bambang Hero Saharjo, who also believes that the disaster was an indirect result of the partial destruction of the Leuser ecosystem.

These findings only confirm the status quo on illegal logging as media reports and analyses have increasingly covered, to the outrage of the general public. Even President Megawati Soekarnoputri joined the chorus, blaming illegal loggers for the disaster when she expressed her condolences last week.

"Nature is angry with us because we have destroyed the environment. Our relatives in North Sumatra have had to suffer because of this," she said at a Flora and Fauna Day event in Jakarta.

Then, amid the public outcry, a denial comes all of a sudden, straight from the top. Speaking to reporters after a Cabinet meeting on Monday, Minister of Forestry M. Prakosa said that illegal logging was not at all to be blamed for the Bahorok tragedy. It was "purely a natural disaster", caused entirely by an abnormally high rainfall. To prove his point, the minister pointed out data that he and two other accompanying Cabinet ministers had obtained on a tour of the afflicted region, accompanied by government surveyors and experts from Yogyakarta- based Gadjah Mada University.

The landslide had occurred because the soil along the steep gradient of the mountain could not hold under the continuous heavy downpour, the minister said. Trees fell, were carried with the soil down to the river and formed a dam, which broke under the pressure of the water, causing the flash flood that washed away Bukit Lawang resort.

Up to a point, the minister's chronological explanation of the disaster seems reasonable -- until one begins to argue that heavy rains are an annual phenomenon in the area, and surely the area around the resort had seen such heavy rains many times before. Many observers believe that illegal logging has not only increased, but has increased dramatically over the past five years or so. The trend, some say, has grown much worse than it had been during the Soeharto regime, which ended in 1998.

Therefore, even if illegal logging cannot be held directly responsible for the Bahorok disaster, it can be suspected of having contributed to the weakening of soil in the area. Perhaps it is in acknowledgment of such suspicions that the minister softened his denial and told legislators on Wednesday that his findings were only tentative, based on video footage taken a few days after the flood.

In light of all this, it is only with partial relief that we learn that the government is considering to relocate the planned Ladia-Galaska highway. This highway, which was to cut through Gunung Leuser National Park, is meant to develop the local economy by linking Aceh's northwest coast with the southeast. Environmentalists, however, fear that the road will only make it easier for illegal loggers to profit from their criminal trade.

The government would be wise to reconsider constructing the Ladia-Galaska highway at all and, finally, better management and control must be exerted over all national parks the country still boasts at present. This goes especially for Gunung Leuser and the Kerinci National Park in West Sumatra, two of Indonesia's grandest nature reserves that are in danger of destruction.

Indonesia is in real danger of losing its once lush tropical forests. Serious efforts must be undertaken to stop illegal logging, at whatever cost.