By Richard C. Paddock
Tribune Newspapers: Los Angeles Times
February 1, 2004
PELINDUNG, Indonesia -- At the end of a busy day cutting trees with chain saws, the four
timber thieves camped in the Sumatran jungle. Three of the loggers rested on a raised
wooden platform, while the fourth prepared food below.
The cook, Siadul, was sitting on the ground eating his dinner when a hungry Sumatran
tiger, driven from its habitat by the relentless logging of the rain forest, leaped out of
the darkness onto Siadul's back, ripped out a chunk of flesh and began dragging him away.
Nature had taken its revenge.
"It was like a cat catching a rat," said Siadul's friend Ponimin, a fellow
illegal logger who, like many Indonesians, uses one name.
The Sumatran tiger--one of only about 500 left in the wild--would have succeeded in taking
Siadul but for a felled log that blocked the path. The tree cutters fired up their chain
saws and scared the animal away, but it was too late for Siadul. He died within hours.
People who live here believe the tiger is the enforcer of proper human behavior in the
jungle, and so to them the killing in November was punishment for some violation of the
forest people's code.
To environmentalists, the attack was the result of a timber harvest that is wildly out of
control.
Across Indonesia, loggers have destroyed huge tracts of rain forest, turning much of the
jungle into farms and palm oil plantations. They sell the timber overseas.
Government officials acknowledge that Indonesia, an archipelago of more than 17,000
islands, is losing an expanse of forest nearly the size of Switzerland annually, and with
it the habitat of endangered tigers, rhinoceroses, orangutans and elephants. Scientists
believe that hundreds of plant and animal species are becoming extinct each year.
Most logging illegal
At least 75 percent of the logging is illegal, said Environment Minister Nabiel Makarim,
but the weak central government, plagued by graft, can't stop it.
"If this goes on for seven or eight years," he said, "we won't have any
more forest."
Even the country's 376 national parks and conservation areas have fallen victim to the
illegal harvest. Nearly every park has been assaulted by chain saws, officials say, some
so severely that they are no longer suitable as nature preserves.
The rate of logging has risen dramatically since President Suharto was forced to step down
in 1998. The authoritarian leader made a practice of rewarding his cronies with profitable
logging concessions but kept some forests off-limits.
The new central government under Megawati Sukarnoputri has granted greater autonomy to
regional officials, and some have opened forests to logging, reaping the profits for
themselves.
The pace of destruction is highest on Sumatra, an island that straddles the equator.
Experts warn that Sumatra's lowland forests--rich in biodiversity--could disappear outside
of national parks by 2005.
In southern Sumatra, villagers have been cutting trees and planting coffee for years in
the Bukit Rindingan protected forest.
The adjacent South Bukit Barisan National Park is home to up to 700 elephants, but about
50,000 people have moved into the preserve, clearing the jungle and building villages.
"It is forbidden to conduct any activities in the protected forest, but in fact it
has become a settlement," said Tamen Sitorus, director of the national park.
"The villagers think, `Why don't we kill the elephants? They are useless.'"
In the squatters' village of Sinar Harapan, residents chopped down trees on a route
traveled by a herd of 13 elephants. On Nov. 28, the elephants appeared at the edge of the
jungle and began eating the farmers' coffee bushes. Waving torches and banging on drums,
the villagers drove them back.
The next day, most villagers fled, but one stayed behind: Mistad, 50, a farmer who had
helped cut down the trees. At midday, the elephants entered the village and crushed him.
Last year, the number of elephant attacks on people jumped. According to forestry
authorities, 16 attacks were reported from 1998 through 2002. In the first five months of
2003, there were 48, at least three of them fatal to the human victims.
Floods, landslides
Apart from animal attacks, officials say illegal logging contributed to floods and
landslides that killed more than 140 people in 2003. Makarim predicted that the number
will jump this year as the illicit harvest continues.
The Indonesian Forestry Department has reported that 5 million to 9 million acres of rain
forest were lost each year from 1997 to 2000. Since then, the destruction has clearly
soared, but the department's monitoring is so lax that it has no estimate of how much
forest is being destroyed. The Indonesian Forum for the Environment estimates trees are
being cut at more than 10 times the sustainable-harvest rate.
Indonesia has some of the world's largest tropical rain forests and ranks with Brazil as
home to a great diversity of animal and plant species. But it is also renowned for
corruption.
Indonesia is wealthy in timber, oil and minerals but suffered for three decades under
Suharto, who did little to develop the country or its people. Since the Asian economic
collapse of 1997, Indonesia has struggled to recover.
By the official count, nearly 40 million people are unemployed among a total population of
more than 225 million.
Some citizens long for a return to what they call the stability of dictatorship, and
others advocate a government based on conservative Islam. But many observers believe that
for now, graft is what makes the country run.
Much of the illegal logging is carried out by large concerns in cahoots with officials in
government and the military.
Some of Sumatra's heaviest logging is in the central province of Riau, where huge swaths
of forest have been cleared for palm oil plantations. For centuries, people and tigers
lived in the area with few conflicts. But as logging accelerated in 1999, tigers began
coming into villages looking for food.
Since 2001, tigers have killed at least six people and possibly up to 30 near the coastal
town of Dumai, authorities say. Many of the victims were illegal loggers.
Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune