Borneo Forest Faces Extinction

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Borneo Forest Faces Extinction

 

 

By Niall McKay

 

 

 

02:00 AM Feb. 13, 2004 PT

 

Illegal logging is destroying the equatorial rain forests of Indonesian Borneo,

bringing the island, once known as the lungs of Asia, to the brink of an

ecological disaster.

 

Not only has 95 percent of the forest legally set aside for logging been cleared

but nearly 60 percent of protected national parkland has been illegally logged,

according to a new report in this week's Science by professor Lisa M. Curran of

the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies.

 

 

 

The illegal timber is turned into plywood and is exported to other parts of

Asia. It is also used to build furniture for Japanese, European and U.S.

markets. The island of Kalimantan's valuable old growth, called meranti

(Philippine mahogany), is used for hardwood flooring and provides wood trim for

luxury automobiles.

 

If the current rate of destruction continues, the report says, Kalimantan, which

is about the size of Texas, will be completely stripped of its rain forests in

the next three years. This will have a drastic effect on the wildlife, the

native population and the local weather patterns. Animals such as Malaysian sun

bears, hornbills, bearded pigs and orangutans are rapidly becoming endangered

species, according to the report.

 

The report combined aerial and satellite photographs with data from geographical

mapping systems and remote sensing devices. It was carried out between 1999 and

September 2003.

 

" Already, what is left (of the forest) is too small and too fragmented to

support many of the species that depend on the forest, " said Curran, director of

the Tropical Resources Institute at Yale University. " For the first time we have

seen large mammals, such as orangutans and Malaysian sun bears, wild boar,

starving. "

 

There are more than 420 different birds and 222 mammal species in Kalimantan,

half of which depend on the rain forests for survival. Furthermore, the

indigenous people of Borneo, the Dyaks, depend on boar as a primary source of

protein.

 

" Clearly the animals are in crisis, " said Curran. " In Gunung Palung National

Park in West Kalimantan, for example, the orangutan population will drop by a

third in the next couple of years. "

 

Curran said she believes that at the current rate of decline, many of the

rain-forest animals will become extinct in less than 10 years. " We won't see

extinctions until we reach some sort of threshold, " she said. " We are very close

to that threshold now and once we reach it will be too late to stop. "

 

The rapid growth of oil palm plantations, which have undergone a 40-fold

increase since 1992, is further exacerbating the problem because large areas of

the rain forest have been clear-cut to make way for the crop, and the

plantations serve as barriers to migrating animal populations.

 

Kalimantan's rain forests' growth cycles interact with the El Niño weather

system. Forest fragmentation has transformed El Niño from a regenerative force

into a destructive one. As the forest is cleared, droughts become more frequent

and severe, giving rise to more frequent wild fires.

 

Borneo is the first land mass the El Niño-Southern Oscillation weather system

hits. And the El Niño wildfires in Borneo and Brazil in 1997 and 1998 created

more carbon dioxide emissions than the whole of Western Europe's industrial

output, according to Curran.

 

There are many explanations offered for the destruction of the rain forest,

including a lack of oversight from a decentralized government and opportunism by

locals.

 

But Curran said she believes that the real causes of the destruction of the

forest are international demand for the timber, a massive industry suffering

from a lack of legal timber, and corruption that started during, but is not

limited to, the former Suharto dictatorship.

 

Over the past two decades, the volume of timber harvested on Borneo exceeded

that of all tropical wood exports from Latin America and Africa combined. At its

height in the mid-1990s it was a $9 billion-a-year industry. Now it's nearly

gone -- more than 90 percent of the Indonesia's timber production is illegal.

 

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