Yale Bulletin and Calendar

February 20, 2004|Volume 32, Number 19

Report decries illegal logging in Indonesia

A team of scientists led by a Yale professor is calling for the immediate transnational management of an Indonesian rainforest to halt illegal logging that is destroying protected lowlands.

Lisa Curran, associate professor of tropical resources at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, headed the group of researchers from the University of Maryland and Indonesia.

"Failure to institute transparent and equitable land use solutions will lead to the irreversible ecological degradation of Borneo's terrestrial ecosystems," say the scientists in a research article in the Feb. 13 issue of Science.

"Stemming the flow of illegal wood from Borneo requires international efforts to document a legitimate chain-of-custody from the forest stand to consumers through independent monitoring. Indonesia's wood-based industries must demonstrate sufficient timber concession stock or reduce capacity," the team added in their report. "Timber and plantation operations must be closely monitored with annual satellite-based assessments [and] strictly enforced penalties to prevent further incursions in the protected areas."

Based on remote sensing satellite and field-based analyses, Curran and the other scientists observed that protected lowland forests in Indonesian Borneo or Kalimantan in southeastern Asia declined by 56% from 1985 to 2001. In the province of West Kalimantan alone, lowland protected areas were reduced by 63%. Protected forests have become increasingly isolated and deforested by commercial loggers, wildfires and their conversion primarily to oil palm plantations, note the researchers.

The report also noted that 38% of lowlands of Gunung Palung National Park (GPNP) in West Kalimantan were deforested from 1988 to 2002. Lowland protected areas, such as the GPNP, are critical to maintaining Borneo's biodiversity, the scientists point out. More than 420 resident bird and 222 mammal species exist on Borneo, and 61% of these birds and 52% to 81% of the mammals are confined to lowland forests. This park contains 17% of Borneo's population of endangered orangutans.

The logging of dipterocarp trees, which are used to make plywood and Formica, is depleting the number of orangutans and pigs that live within Borneo's lowlands and depend on the fruit that the trees produce, the team reports. Threatened nomadic and large vertebrates with extensive lowland ranges, including the Malayan sun bear, bearded pig and orangutan, are predicted to decline precipitously if logging continues.

Over the past two decades, the volume of dipterocarp timber exports in cubic meters from the Kalimantan, Sarawak and Sabah provinces of Borneo exceeded all tropical wood exports from tropical Africa and Latin America combined. Logging within protected areas is expected to increase because of state regulations passed in 2001 that allow for uncontrolled logging of remaining accessible lowland, and widespread conversion of forest to oil palm plantations outside of protected areas.

"Even uninhabited frontier parks become susceptible to market forces without an active civil society, institutions and effective governance," Curran says.

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