Sri Wahyuni and Muninggar Sri Saraswati, The Jakarta Post, Yogyakarta/Jakarta

Replanting Java's critical woodland has become the main priority for the government's reforestation program this year after drought has devastated several rice-producing regencies across the island.

Coordinating Minister for People's Welfare Jusuf Kalla said over the weekend that the government had earmarked some Rp 1.2 trillion (US$120 million) for reforestation projects that will begin in 2003, with Java getting the bulk of it.

"We will prioritize (revitalizing) forests on Java, especially those that are vital water catchment areas," he said in Yogyakarta over the weekend.

Kalla said the government would try to carry out reforestation programs covering 300,000 hectares of critical land in 15 provinces and 154 regencies across the country.

The government, according to Jusuf Kalla, is targeting 21,000 hectares of conservation forests, 65,000 hectares of protected forests, 79,000 hectares of production forest, and 149,000 hectares of "other" critical areas.

Almost 100,000 hectares, or one third of the amount to be replanted, will be on Java, Jusuf Kalla said while quoting data from the ministry of forestry.

Tachrir Fathoni of the ministry of forestry said the areas on Java targeted for reforestation would not include any of the land that state-owned forestry company PT Perhutani -- which has rights to some 2 million hectares -- operates on.

This year, a 5-year, 3 million-hectare reforestation program began across the country. Next year, some 500,000 hectares of critical land are expected to be reforested.

The government has theorized that the cause of the increasingly worse weather extremes, such as drought and flooding, was due to uncontrolled destruction of forests which function as water catchment areas, among other things.

"We expect the reforestation program to be able to prevent ponds and reservoirs from drying up when in future dry seasons," he said.

Tachrir, who is the spokesman for the Forestry Ministry, said that his ministry was expected to start planting some areas later this year, pending the disbursement of the money from the government.

"We also want to wait for the rainy season (before starting to cultivate) as the young trees will need sufficient water to grow properly," he explained, while adding that the government had started to think about a reforestation plan earlier this year.

Tachrir said he was optimistic that the government would be able to go ahead with this year's reforestation program.

"The cultivation will be conducted by regional administrations with the central government's assistance," he said.

Each of the new trees will take between seven and 80 years to grow to a size with any commercial value. Tachrir said that the reforestation plan also includes a program to monitor the sprout development to prevent illegal logging of young trees.

"We will take care of the monitoring," he said without elaborating.

Tachrir said the government's commitment to reforest some 3 million hectares of critical land would only be able to cover small parts of some 43 million hectares of the denuded former forests, or an area more than half the size of Kalimantan, that has been damaged in just the past five years.

Although the forestry ministry claims that there are some 104 million hectares of old growth forest remaining, local and international ecology organizations have put the number at only 60 million hectares at present, after losing more than 75 percent of its forests to exploitation in the past three decades.

The condition of the country's forests, once known as the second-largest source of biodiversity in the world after Brazil, started to decline after the president Soeharto's New Order regime exploited the forests in a completely unregulated manner and allowed huge mines to be dug throughout the wild lands of the archipelago. Mining and forestry were two of its major money-making machines.