Edi Petebang, The Jakarta Post, Pontianak

Recent surveys conducted by Harvard University's Laboratory of Tropical Forest Ecology have found that more than 61,000 hectares of the 90,000-hectare Gunung Palung National Park in the regency of Ketapang, West Kalimantan, have been destroyed over the last ten years.

"The illegal logging and other kinds of destruction have inflicted total losses of US$345 million, or more than Rp 3 trillion," Eko Darmawan, the leader of the survey team, said on Monday.

The surveys, sponsored by Harvard University, were conducted between July and November of last year. The survey team members consisted of local and foreign experts.

More than six million cubic meters of logs were found to have been stolen from the 61,200 hectares that had been cleared by illegal loggers, meaning that an average of 101 cubic meters of logs had been stolen from each hectare of forest, he said.

"The team members went along 13 rivers and found 252 sites where illegally obtained logs were stacked before being transported out of the park. Ninety-five of the sites were still being used, and 43 of these were large-scale in nature. We also found three exit routes for illegal logs," said Eko, a forestry expert.

"The first exit route is the river Laur, which leads to Ketapang. The second is the river Matan which provides access to many areas, including Melano and Batang bays, and the city of Pontianak. The third exit route is the Semanai river, which leads directly to the South China Sea," he said.

Redo, one of the surveyors, said the team had concluded that at least 20 components were involved in the illegal logging and distribution chain.

"The most important component is the financial backers known as cukong. What is very interesting is the fact that the loggers always end up indebted to the cukong. Thus, they can do nothing but cut the trees so as to get the money to repay their debts," Redo said. "The cukong also control the price of the logs."

According to Redo, the cukong include businessmen living outside Ketapang and Ketapang administration officials.