WWF Warns Indonesia about Pulp Manufacturers

Over the years I have trekked through some pristine forest areas and happily got lost in jungles. I have also written about the beauty of Indonesia's national parks and the spectacular walks through them.

The World Wildlife Fund has been monitoring the forests in Indonesia and in particular the national parks. Illegal logging is and always will be the biggest problem faced the government as it is this practice that is steadily destroying the natural beauty of these pristine areas.

Then there is the problem of the pulp manufacturers.

Conservation group WWF said that one of the world's largest paper and pulp companies was failing to live up to pledges to help protect some of Indonesia's most important remaining forests.

A new WWF monitoring report showed that Asia Pulp and Paper or APP, was threatening crucial forests despite commitments made to its buyers.

According to the report, the company has been responsible for about 80,000 hectares of natural forest loss every year, equivalent to roughly one half of the forests lost annually in Riau province on Sumatra.

As of 2005, Singapore based APP controlled nearly one-fifth or 520,000 hectares of the natural forests left on Riau's mainland it said.

"All these forests are under threat as are any additional forests that APP acquires in its quest to fill its wood supply gap and expand pulp production" WWF-Indonesia's Nazir Foead was quoted by AFP as saying in a statement.

WWF estimates that around 450,000 hectares of forest have been cleared over the past five years to supply APP's pulp mill in Riau alone.

"APP's failure to commit to the protection of high conservation value forests means that many more hundreds of thousands of hectares of forests will go the same route" Foead warned.

Such forests have a critical importance due to their environmental, socio-economic, biodiversity or landscape values.

The WWF said that at a meeting last month APP refused to guarantee that high conservation value forests would be excluded from its future logging and wood sourcing operations. APP had previously committed to protecting several blocks of such forest but monitoring showed they had exposed them to illegal logging and fires.

"By refusing to protect HCVFs, APP is endangering the very survival of the tigers, elephants and other species that inhabit Indonesia's forests" Foead added.