Jakarta – An average of 1.6 million ha of Indonesia's forests are being destroyed every year, mostly by illegal loggers with powerful connections here and abroad, a report said yesterday.
Forestry Ministry secretary-general Suripto said illegal loggers formed mafia-like international networks and that their operations were hard to track down.
According to the Jakarta Post, the conclusion was revealed on Friday by a seven-month-old team set up by the Forestry and Plantations Ministry to stop the crime and probe the untouchable figures behind the seemingly-endless smuggling of the country's timber overseas, particularly to China, Hongkong and Singapore. "If we succeed in curbing timber thefts in a certain area, the network just shifts operations to other places," he said.
"It is obvious that the timber thefts are backed by financially powerful people. But we can't give out the names yet because we're worried that these people will flee," Mr Suripto told a press conference.
He also said that the ministry has already sent another team to probe the possible role of a member of the People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) from the Golkar party.
Mr Suripto said if the person is proven guilty, the ministry would ask President Abdurrahman Wahid to expel him from the assembly. He added that the Golkar legislator is also suspected of playing a significant role in the abduction and assault of activists from several non-governmental organisations.
Mr Suripto said the tree felling had worsened since the economic crisis hit in mid-1997, but they had been unable to stop it. "During the crisis, forest destruction has taken place in protected and conserved forests as well as national parks," he said.
He also said the financial loss incurred by the deforestation, through lost taxes and forest resources as well as funds spent for reforestation, stood at 1.2 trillion rupiah (S$260 million) annually.
In July, the London-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) said in a report that illegal logging in Indonesia had now reached "catastrophic" levels, with 70 per cent of timber processed derived from illegal sources.
It said that at the current rate, it was estimated lowland forest areas on the island of Sumatra and the Indonesian provinces on the island of Borneo – East, South and Central Kalimantan – would disappear in a decade. The EIA report also said the government's failure to stop illegal logging at national parks has resulted in the shrinking population of endangered orang-utans.
Earlier, the authorities in the province of North Sumatra had said they planned to take at least 18 companies to court for burning tens of thousands of hectares of rain forest. However, Environment Minister Sony Keraf had confessed in another report that he was helpless in tackling the haze.