Ecologists - Indonesia's Timber Barons Major Threat To Forests, Government

[hatrack]

JAKARTA (AFP): Timber barons who corrupt senior officials to plunder Indonesia's tropical forests have emerged as a powerful and dangerous threat, according to new claims Wednesday by ecologists. At a meeting to present videos and photographs which they say points to a deforesting "mafia" backed by security forces and top politicians, ecologists called on Indonesia's incoming government to halt illegal logging.

"The national parks have been invaded by loggers paid by the big timbers barons, this is organized crime," Dave Currey of the British Environmental Investigation Agency, told AFP before a presentation of the new evidence. The agency, working with a coalition of local groups, hopes the photos and films depicting heavy destruction across the Indonesian archipelago will help spur the country's next president to take effective action.

EDIT

Indonesia is estimated to be losing nearly two million hectares (4.94 million acres) of forest annually -- an area half the size of Switzerland -- up from one million hectares in the 1980s. Forest cover fell from 162 million hectares in 1950 to only 98 million hectares in 2000. Despite their evidence, Indonesia's environmental groups say they are powerless to stop one of the world's largest expanses of forests after Brazil from vanishing because of the level of corruption.

"The rate of deforestation keeps increasing. We are running out of time," said Togu Manurung of Forest Watch Indonesia. "There is no proper law enforcement because of corruption. It is the core problem." Manurung said army and police were in many cases involved in tree felling in certain areas, adding that up to 80 percent of Indonesian wood sold in Western countries came from illegal trade. Arbi Valentinus of environmental group Telepak said several senior government figures were widely known to be involved in the illegal logging but were untouched by law enforcers."

EDIT

http://forests.org/articles/reader.asp?linkid=35330

File under "D" for "Duh".

[ArmchairActivist]

1. Things don't look so good...

Indonesia: Island nation with many, many, many people. Doesn't bode real well for anything living there that ain't people. And eventually, you'd think they won't be fairing so well either.

Madagascar, Hispaniola, Philippines... Easter Island?

"O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth, That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!"