Indonesia's West Kalimantan province has lost an estimated 300,000 hectares to illegal logging over the past two years and will become a desert by 2040, reports said today.

Research recently compiled by the University of Tanjungpura, in West Kalimantan, shows that the province has lost 165,631 hectares of forest per year in 2000 and 2001, said The Jakarta Post.

If that rate of deforestation continued, the province's remaining 6.3 million hectares of forest would be completely wiped out within 38 years, the research concluded. "The main problem is illegal logging by both locals and holders of forest concessions, and the forest fires during the annual dry season," said lead researcher Gusti Hardiansyah.

The high rate of unemployment in the province has provided a large and willing labour force for the illegal logging business, the researcher said.

Nearly 80 per cent of the illegally cut logs are smuggled abroad to China, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan, Hardiansyah said.

"About half of the hotel occupants in Ketapang [West Kalimantan] are usually timber businessmen from Malaysia, who come here to purchase illegal logs and timber," the researcher said.

According to the university's research, there are 433,250 sawmills in the province, most of which are operating without permission but with the open collusion of the Indonesian police and military forces.