We wish to clarify, in response to your Jan. 9, 2002
article "Gunung Palung National Park in West
Kalimantan destroyed, that Gunung Palung is still
there! The reporting is based on excellent field research
by a Harvard University-affiliated team of foresters, and
contains important points concerning the tragic economics
of illegal logging at this beleaguered Park.
However, the article makes its point too strongly in
saying that Gunung Palung is "destroyed". This
sort of statement is dangerous -- for if it had actually
been destroyed, if truly "it is hard to find an
orangutan in the park now," why should we care
anymore?
For the past several years we have been conducting
ecological research, including an orangutan population
census, at Gunung Palung National Park. The situation is
indeed grim. However, the Park is not yet a wasteland.
Although it is true that roughly two-thirds of Gunung
Palung has been degraded by illegal logging, it has not
been utterly clear-cut: These disturbed patches still have
high conservation value.
Gunung Palung National Park remains a vitally important
sanctuary for wildlife, and, provided that it is protected
from further disturbance, will continue to support one of
the few remaining viable orangutan populations in the
world. Logging has not rendered Gunung Palung worthless.
It is a final "postage stamp" of Kalimantan's
once vast and unbelievably diverse lowland rainforest -- a
forest that elsewhere has mostly been converted into a sea
of oil palm and human development. This National Park is
one of the last places that can and does support a full
complement of native Kalimantan fauna, and as such it
still deserves our strongest conservation efforts.
Let's not write off Gunung Palung, and the rest of this
country's forests, as "destroyed". Let's not
convince the public that there are no orangutans left,
when the fact is there still are and, if Indonesia acts
now, there always will be.
ANDREA E. JOHNSON
and ANDREW J.MARSHALL
Department of Anthropology
Harvard University
Boston, Massachusetts
USA
