Illegal Logging Devastating 'Protected' Parks
8/25/99
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Title: Illegal Logging Devastating 'Protected' Parks
Source: DEUTSCHE PRESSE-AGENTUR in Jakarta
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: August 25, 1999
Logging and forest fires are destroying rainforests and the wildlife
they support, government authorities and environmentalists warned
yesterday.
Uncontrolled forest fires - mostly lit illegally to clear logged
forest areas for palm oil plantations - are again raging through
Borneo and Sumatra, while a blanket of smoke is covering villages and
towns on the islands.
The fires were mostly lit by plantation companies taking advantage of
a three-month drought, the state-run Antara news agency said.
Local authorities feared a repeat of the huge rainforest fires of
recent years, in which "millions of hectares of tropical forest were
destroyed" on Borneo and Sumatra, Antara said.
Environmental groups warned in Jakarta that large-scale illegal
logging in two Indonesian national parks seriously threatened the
survival of orang-utans, one of the world's most endangered species.
The Environmental Investigation Agency, based in London and
Washington, and Telapak Indonesia said illegal logging was rampant in
the Gunung Leuser National Park in North Sumatra and the Tanjung
Puting National Park in central Kalimantan.
"I have witnessed scenes of appalling devastation in both of these
so-called protected parks. The logging is totally out of control,"
said agency director Dave Currey. "The Government of Indonesia must
act against the timber barons directing this destruction before these
vital areas and their wildlife are lost."
The Gunung Leuser National Park in northern Sumatra covers 2.5
million hectares, from the Indian Ocean to the hills along the
Straits of Malacca, and has mountains 3,000 metres high.
Unlike orang-utans elsewhere, the ginger-haired primates in the
park's Suaq Balimbing region live in structured social groups and
make and use tools, the agency said. Yet activists had "witnessed
loggers with chainsaws operating in the Suaq Balimbing research
area".
The Tanjung Puting National Park on Borneo - where an orang-utan
research programme was set up in the early 1970s - was also under
great threat from illegal logging.
"We are calling for the Indonesian Government to clamp down
immediately on the illegal logging," the groups said.
"We are also calling for the international community to use their
power within Indonesia to try to get the Government to act.
"If we don't see this happening soon, both Tanjung Puting National
Park and Gunung Leuser National Park will no longer be worth
protecting and some of these species, especially orang-utans, may be
lost forever."