Trees not at all happy about 'reformasi'

SEMARANG: Central Java has lost nearly seven million trees over the last five years since 1988 just from rampant illegal logging, a councillor claimed on Wednesday.

The illegal loggers were estimated to have sold their ill- gotten assets for some Rp 1.5 trillion (US$1.75 million), said Sutoyo Abadi, a member of the Central Java legislative council.

"The looting during the 1998-2003 period (since wider autonomy was granted to provinces following the reform movement) has resulted in around 84,184 hectares of cleared land, or 12 percent of the total forested areas of Central Java," he said while claiming that the loggers were "local people".

The province is more than 3 million square hectares in total, 648,819 hectares of which were natural forests prior to 1998.

Between January and June this year alone, an estimated 150,000 trees were illegally felled, with an estimated value of nearly Rp 33 billion, Sutoyo said.

"The people of this province eventually suffer the consequences of such wanton destruction of the natural environment. Since this unregulated increase in illegal logging began, Central Java has become much more prone to flooding during the wet seasons," he added.

The central government has recently imposed a ban on logging in Java to stop unchecked deforestation on one of the most densely populated islands in the world. --JP