Battle in the rainforest Environmental Disaster National parks such as Gunung Palung and Tanjung Puting have become frontier territory in which small logging bands, sawmill bosses and locals fight it out for the last of Kalimantan's pristine forest. Travelling on a sampan into Gunung Palung in west Kalimantan, MARIANNE KEARNEY The Sunday Times Indonesia bureau observed at first-hand the wanton destruction of a national treasure AS A former village head, Mr Abu Kasim knew how important Kalimantan's unique national parks were to the villagers living in their shadow. But even he was surprised to discover at what lengths they would go to protect their right to log it. He was staying with other men from his village at the base camp on the outskirts of Gunung Palung when a mob of 50 loggers arrived at their camp, burnt down their buildings and beat him and his friends up. The reason: Mr Abu and his friends had been conducting an investigation into illegal logging in the park. One of Indonesia's most biologically diverse national parks, Gunung Palung, home to at least a thousand orang utans as well as countless other endangered species 10 years ago, was of little interest to logging companies or locals. But that was before the fires of 1997-98 devastated huge swathes of forest, before dozens of loggers became unemployed as logging concessions expired, and before other remaining areas had been snapped up by palm oil companies. In the last few years, this supposedly protected park has become frontier territory in which small bands of loggers financed by sawmill owners battle it out with locals as well as with other logging bands. But it is not only at Gunung Palung that battle rages. In Tanjung Puting National Park, central Kalimantan, where people have logged illegally and openly for at least 10 years, logging bosses have even fewer qualms about threatening anyone who might interfere with their operation. DEMONSTRATIONS FOLLOW CRACKDOWNS ONE such logging boss, a parliamentarian who processes and exports the park's timber to Java, had his men beat up and threaten to kill a British woman and an Indonesian environment activist. Since the attack in January, any crackdown has been followed by demonstrations staged by hundreds of loggers outside government offices. East of Pontianak, a German government forest research project, which loggers fear will interfere with their cross-border trade from Sanggau, has also been threatened. Mr Abu and his village co-operative were also considered a threat by the loggers because they were hoping to develop a community forest project on the park edges, which might have stemmed the tide of loggers riding the park's rivers every day. Back in Pontianak, the head of the Forestry Department told the local press the investigation team's harassment was unfortunate, but blamed Mr Abu and his team for conducting an investigation without informing the security forces. Mr Abu and his friends had not informed local security forces or the Forestry Department because previous investigations involving these forces proved fruitless when the illegal loggers were tipped off. Despite the numerous eye-witnesses including some police, no charges have been made. Locals such as the camp's boat driver Udin, who witnessed the attack, was surprised by the violence unleashed, but given the amount of money at stake that is not surprising. Nobody knows how much timber is logged illegally in these areas, but some estimates put it at 30,000 cubic metres each year from Gunung Palung alone. During a trip to the national park, Sunday Review found log trains, beams of sawn timber tied together, floating down a river. Another river at the northern end of the park was similarly choked with logging trains. A brief aerial survey of the park by researchers from the Harvard orang-utan research centre pinpointed dozens of logging camps located along the rivers. And a Dutch scientist, who surveyed the park, said that nearly 70 per cent of the area had already been felled at least a little. Travelling in a sampan, we passed several groups of tied logs and beams about to be floated downstream. At a makeshift logging camp alongside the river, three men were immersed waist-deep in the river tying up beams of timber, while another two pushed beams from a huge stack into the river. Behind them were timber rails, stretching several kilometres, which allow the loggers to drag out the logs either by hand or on bicycle. Mr Muhammad Amin, a 30-year-old from Rantau Panjang at the base of this river, says he has been working the area for several months. As a former sawmill worker in a nearby town, chances are he will sell his logs to the sawmill. Although he would not confirm who gives him the money to pay all the other loggers, villagers say the loggers are given advance payments for their workers and set up camp in the park for the month or two that they log an area. The system is an example of highly efficient sub-contracting. By financing these local logging teams, the sawmill owners or logging bosses make almost twice as much profit compared to what they would make buying legal timber. They avoid the cost of owning a logging concession, which is legally required to operate a sawmill, paying for reforestation and paying a fee on all the logs they cut. The park service claims that there are regular patrols to check for illegal loggers. However on the days that Sunday Review visited the park, there was no one patrolling. At the nearby Harvard research station, the researchers say they rarely see the police move any further than from their base posts to the Harvard station 2 km away. To distract attention from the issue of illegal logging, a local pressure group has begun accusing the Harvard research station of biological piracy. Press reports claimed they blocked local people from entering the park, that their research into orang utans was a front for biological piracy and even the head of the local parliament called for the station to be closed because it was ""manipulative''. The result is that everyone who leaves the park has had his bags searched for biological material, while a few kilometres down river, teams of loggers continue to extract dozens of large pieces of biological material -- meranti logs -- without interruption. Ironically, loggers such as Mr Hadi, whom we met on the trip down river, would make a lot more money if these logging operations were legal and they were processing the timber themselves, a proposal supported by Mr Abu's village. Each of these loggers is only paid 17,000 rupiah (S$3)-20,000 rupiah per day for cutting and transporting the much sought-after meranti or ramin logs. On the international market, these logs fetch US$100 (S$170) per piece, while in Indonesia they are worth around half as much. Taking a break from moving a huge logging train down river, Mr Hadi says he is only logging temporarily while he waits for other work. But other work could be some time in coming. Local farming is often unreliable because, among other things, the areas suffer from frequent flooding and poor soil, which environmentalists say is partly the result of logging. Mr Hasanuddin, originally from Gunung Palung village, now working at the park's orang-utan research centre, says the men in his village would prefer not to log the park, but they are open to the highest bidder. And if that bidder is the chainsaw operator, it is hard for them to refuse work that is far more reliable than farming. Most of the villagers do not really understand the value of the park, he says, or that it will even be eventually depleted. National park police supposedly patrol the park and are located at strategic points along one river, which would allow them to see where the timber exits. However they say of the 25 cases of timber thieves this year, they are not sure how many, if any, have been prosecuted. Mr Sugeng, one of the park police, says they do operations to search for illegal loggers, but are not always able to arrest the loggers. ""We can't make problems with the people because those who make problems are the cukong from outside the park,'' he says. The ordinary people should not be punished, he says. ""It should be the cukongs, who give them the means to log anyway.'' Respecting local people's right to make a living has become the latest slogan bandied about by officials, from those in the Forestry Department to park staff and even in the local parliament. However, it also means none of the timber bosses have been fined or caught. And as the Secretary-General for Forestry Suripto points out, such an extensive operation could not have been carried out if not for some of the forestry officials, as well as the security forces, being in collusion with the timber bosses. If the authorities wanted to track down the park's logged timber it would not be too hard. In Teluk Melano, there are at least six sawmills but only two have a licence. Even the sawmills that do have a licence do not have a logging concession to supply them with timber. At one such sawmill, owned by PT Maya Lestari, piles of unstamped, and therefore illegal, beams wait to be processed. However, owner Haji Mahali denies that he buys illegally felled timber and says he obtains it from a nearby island. From these small towns, the timber is then sent to Ketapang, where it is exported to Kuching, Sarawak, or even to Java for the thriving furniture and construction industries. FAKE TIMBER PERMITS IN PORTS such as Pontianak or Ketapang, the timber is issued with fake timber permits and then exported to Singapore, Malaysia and even as far as China. The Forestry Department claims not to be able to track the illegal timber saying other agencies such as the police and port authorities should be cracking down on the export. If the winds of reformasi have opened up forests in the national park to logging, allowing not just the large companies but even the local villager to exploit protected forest, reformasi has also done wonders for the illegal cross-border trade between Kalimantan and Sarawak. According to Mr Julian Newman, from the London-based Environmental Investigation Agency, dozens of truckloads of timber cross the Kalimantan-Sarawak border everyday. ""Money is just dripping out of the place. During this crisis, Indonesia is not only losing forest but losing it very cheaply,'' says Mr Newman. The Secretary-General to the Forestry Ministry, Mr Suripto, agrees it is a huge problem, but cracking down on it is more difficult. For instance, Golkar legislator Abdul Rasyid, who has openly logged Tanjung Puting National Park, has been caught trying to smuggle illegal logs to Java through two subsidiary companies, says Mr Suripto. But 10 months after an initial investigation, Mr Suripto says he is finally nearer to charging the legislator. Mr Suripto says he plans to hold some lightning operations against illegal logging. He plans to do so with a handpicked police force to avoid any accidential leaks of the operation. These operations are to supply evidence for the Attorney-General to file charges against the logging bosses and sawmill owners. But it is hard to see how a few lightning operations can stop such an entrenched business. Next week, when international donors meet in Tokyo, they will be discussing not just Indonesia's economic reform, but also the future of its forests. The Indonesian Forestry Minister will need to be at his most persuasive to convince European and American donors that a promised crackdown on illegal logging is enough to stop the rapid decline of Indonesia's unique forests. Last gasps for great apes of Borneo After being logged, forests will dry out and become even more prone to fires IF INDONESIA'S voracious logging industry continues to expand unchecked, Borneo's famed rainforest, one of the most ecologically diverse in the world, will become little more than scrub and sawdust in 10 years, leading environmentalists have predicted. And Singapore's famous orang utan Ah Meng could find herself one of the few of her species left alive as her wild cousins could become extinct in as little as 10 years. The World Bank estimates that throughout Indonesia, legal and illegal logging is destroying 1.6 million ha of forest every year, and that if the rapid deforestation continues, all of Kalimantan's remaining prime forest will be gone in 10 years and Sumatra's in five. As Kalimantan's once lush forests are logged, they will dry out and become even more prone to fires than they were in 1997, say experts such as Agus from the World Wide Fund for Nature. His organisation funded studies of the effects of the devastation three years ago. ""Once you have a forest that is degraded and you open up the forest, the frequency of fires is likely to become much higher,'' he says. ""So pray for more La Nina seasons if you don't want more haze over the next decade,'' Mr Agus adds, referring to the phenonenon of unusually rainy conditions worldwide. And once forests have been logged they become far more attractive sites for plantation developments which of course will produce massive burn-offs and haze as more land is cleared. For one of man's closest relatives, the orang utan, which shares 98 per cent of the same genes with humans, the loss of so much forest will be devastating. Habitat loss over the last decade has halved the numbers of orang utans in Indonesia. In Borneo, which includes Sarawak and Kalimantan, primatologists estimate that the 1997 forest fires may have reduced their numbers to a third that of 1990. In Gunung Palung, the numbers may be down to as little as 2,000, while in Tanjung Puting National Park in central Kalimantan, researchers estimate only 500 may be left. Researchers say that with such small populations in increasingly smaller forests, the future of the orang utans is even gloomier. ""A whole population could be wiped out by floods. What does this do for genetic diversity?'' asks Mr Andrew Marshall, a researcher at Gunung Palung. Professor Birute Galdikas, a world authority on the animal, has watched the Tanjung Puting National Park surrounding her orang-utan rehabilitation centre shrink by the year. She says it is hard to predict when the great apes will become extinct, but thinks they have fewer than 20 years left. Prof Galdikas would appear to be a natural choice as an outspoken advocate for conservation, but instead she prefers to tackle the problem of deforestation from a more local angle. ""We don't talk about conservation but we talk about the right of the locals to work. And I complain that illegal loggers are destroying a place to work,'' she says about her campaign with the central Kalimantan government to preserve the park. ""One reason we don't have illegal logging and gold mining in our end of the park is that the local politicians know that we can put 100 people on the streets,'' she says, cutting through the academic arguments on tackling one of Indonesia's most corrupt industries. The hundred people who would protest against illegal logging are Camp Leaky employees and their families, who have come to rely on the orang-utan centre rather than logging outfits for their income. It is the right of the locals to work and their growing understanding that a well-preserved national park will provide them with a future, rather than environmental arguments, that have persuaded locals to campaign for the national park, she adds.