Forests need 120 years to recover-Forestry Minister

The Jakarta Post, 7 August 2006:

Forests need '120 years to recover'

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Indonesian deforestation has been so severe it would take 120 years

to regain the 60 million hectares of lost forests, Forestry Minister

M.S. Kaban says.

Kaban said in Padang, West Sumatra, on Saturday that 60 million

hectares of pristine forests had been lost over the past 20 years due

to over-exploitation, land conversion, natural disasters and forest

fires.

The government's reforestation efforts could only recover about

600,000 hectares per year, he said, meaning that full regrowth would

take between 100 and 120 years.

"But if deforestation continues at the current rate, the recovery

time will be even longer," he said, adding that the reforestation

program cost Rp 3 trillion (about US$330 million) annually.

Indonesia is one of the world's most heavily forested countries with

about 130 million hectares of forest land.

However, the country also has the world's worst deforestation rate at

2.8 million hectares a year, causing state losses of some US$5

billion. The most common problems are rampant illegal logging, forest

fires and land conversion for giant plantations and mining

operations.

Kaban, who chairs the Crescent Star Party (PBB), said he was

disheartened by the fact that many major illegal loggers were

arrested only to be acquitted by courts.

"They always escape justice, while the government takes the blame,"

he said.

Aside from causing state losses, the timber barons and financiers of

illegal logging are impoverishing people who live in close proximity

to forests.

"People who live in areas that have become centers of illegal logging

mostly become poor," he said.

"Meanwhile, the barons are enjoying their holidays in Hong Kong,

Singapore and Malaysia," he added, referring to countries widely

alleged to be transportation hubs for Indonesia's illegally felled

timber.

He said that local people who worked for loggers might receive up to

Rp 2 million for helping cut down some of the precious old trees near

their homes.

"They also live in constant fear of arrest," he said.

More than a dozen financial backers arrested by the government for

involvement in illegal logging last year were all acquitted by the

courts due to "lack of evidence".

Hundreds of people across the country have also been arrested by

police and forest rangers for illegal logging.

"I've met some of them. They had to leave their wives and children to

work deep inside the forest, where they are ravaged by mosquitoes and

at constant risk of arrest," Kaban said. He was referring to illegal

loggers in Kalimantan and Papua, from where much of the some 10

million cubic meters of timber smuggled out of the country annually

comes from.