Save our national forests

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.