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Deforestation in Borneo Kalimantan at the Crossroads: Dipterocarp Forests and the Future of Indonesian Borneo Tina Butler, mongabay.com April 13, 2005 2007 UPDATE EDITOR'S NOTE: Borneo, the third largest island in the world, was once covered with dense rainforests. With swampy coastal areas fringed with mangrove forests and a mountainous interior, much of the terrain was virtually impassable and unexplored. Headhunters ruled the remote parts of the island until a century ago. In the 1980s and 1990s Borneo underwent a remarkable transition. Its forests were leveled at a rate unparalleled in human history. Borneo's rainforests went to industrialized countries like Japan and the United States in the form of garden furniture, paper pulp and chopsticks. Initially most of the timber was taken from the Malaysian part of the island in the northern states of Sabah and Sarawak. Later forests in the southern part of Borneo, an area belonging to Indonesia and known as Kalimantan, became the primary source for tropical timber. Today the forests of Borneo are but a shadow of those of legend. The southern half of Borneo contains some of the richest and most unique ecosystems on the planet. Indonesian Borneo, known as Kalimantan, is also one of the most environmentally threatened places on Earth. While many scientists have come to study this region, opportunities for observation are becoming increasingly scarce with the current perils facing the forests of Kalimantan.
Dr. Lisa Curran has spent a good portion of her professional career studying ecosystems in this area. From 1984 to 2001, she led a comprehensive study documenting the rate of forest loss in Western Kalimantan and surveyed an area of over four million hectares (about 9.9 million acres). The results of her work were published last February and her findings are numbing. The report estimates that "protected" lowland forests have decreased by more than 56 percent, meaning some six and a half million acres are gone forever. Parks supposedly off limits to loggers have fallen as laws are ignored by timber barons with political connections, while large areas of forest in Kalimantan have been cleared for palm oil plantations that, in many cases, have yet to be planted. Biologically rich Dipoterocarp forests One of the primary areas of study for Dr. Curran beyond a general survey of the region, has been the particular observation of tree reproduction within the Dipterocarpaceae family, the main family of canopy trees in Kalimantan rainforests. The rare Dipterocarp trees, of which there are about 385 species from nine genres, are regarded as unique ecosystems, with an intricately attuned connection to the environment. Tree production in this family is inextricably linked to the arrival of El Niņo. Dipterocarps synchronize their reproduction, called masting, to the onset of the El Niņo Southern Oscillation, which occurs approximately once every four years. The traditional climatic conditions of an El Niņo year stimulate synchronous fruiting and subsequent flowering in the Dipterocarps and are imperative for regional seed production, and ultimately, forest regeneration. Individual trees may carry up to 120 fruits and the trees have been known to synchronize over a scale of 370 million acres. Typically, natural seed production is so immense that there is a surplus for local fauna to gorge upon and local people to collect and sell. Dr. Curran's observations noted significant changes in animal migration patterns and increases in populations during masting periods as animals come to feed. The trees produce so many seeds that the forest floor is literally carpeted during a five week period when a staggering 96 percent of the seeds may fall to the ground. With such a dense layering of seed it would seem there would be more than enough opportunity for some seedlings to ascend to the canopy. However, with the present state of affairs in Kalimantan, this apparent excess of seeds is proving to be not nearly sufficient.
The disappearance of the Dipterocarp forests of Borneo would be more than a simple environmental loss; it would cause significant damage to Kalimantan economy which relies heavily on the timber industry that produces approximately $9.2 billion annually. Western Kalimantan is the third largest exporting region in Indonesia which controls 95 percent of the world's tropical plywood trade and provides 80 percent of the plywood used in the United States. Currently more tropical timber is extracted from Borneo than all of Latin America and Africa combined. The success of the timber industry In Kalimantan is threatening its own survival by destroying this delicately functioning and interconnected ecosystem.
The problem with attempting to regulate or limit the rate of destruction is tied to the flaws in the administration and function of Kalimantan's parks. The three established national parks in Indonesia--Gunung Palung, Bukit Baka/Bukit Raya and Bentuang Karimun are not protected in the traditional sense. "Protected" here means that lands encompassed within the parks are to be used by local communities for the harvesting of all forest products, including timber and wildlife. 79 percent of the forested area is operated by state-run timber concessions handed out to military interests and only six percent of this region is nominally protected in the sense described previously. Since former dictator Suharto's downfall in 1998, a policy of decentralization has been implemented throughout the Indonesia resulting in changes in the administration of national parks. Today local park officials are often poorly paid, so they use their positions to demand cash payments from enterprising locals, including illegal logging groups. As a result, the park system is plagued with corruption, a booming bribery-based economy and increasingly compromised forests. According to the World Bank, about 70 percent of the timber in the region is felled illegally. Dipterocarps suffer Seeds from Dipterocarp trees generate about $25.8 million annually for local residents, but seed harvesting is in direct competition with commercial logging -- a much more profitable activity. While a non-timber timber product like Dipterocarp seeds has great appeal from a sustainable standpoint, it simply cannot compete with the payout from felled trees. Also of concern, due to the scarcity of forest and Dipterocarps in non-protected areas, seeds consumers -- both human and animal -- are increasingly eating Dipterocarp seeds before they germinate threatening the long-term viability by reducing the reductive capacity of these forests.
Compounded by fires The situation for Indonesian Borneo's rainforests has become even more dire after massive forest fires in Eastern Kalimantan burned more than 12 million acres (five million hectares), an area close to the size of Costa Rica, in 1998. Beyond the ruined forest, the fires brought pollution and intensified El Niņo's drought. Huge sections of Dipterocarp forest were destroyed in the blaze. The Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) estimated an economic loss to Indonesia in excess of nine billion dollars. Carbon emissions from the fires were high enough to make the country one of the highest polluters in the world that year. In late 2001, researchers confirmed a long-standing suspicion of a correlation between logging and the incidence of catastrophic forest fires in tropical rainforests. A team of German and Indonesian scientists using remote sensing, ground and aerial surveys and satellite imagery, determined that the majority of burned acreage was land made up of timber concessions, plantations and tracts converted for agricultural use and then left fallow. Almost two thirds of the pulp wood plantations in Eastern Kalimantan were destroyed by the fires, while less than one million acres (400,000 hectares) burned in protected forests. In their natural state, tropical forests do not typically burn. Fuel loads are low and what little remains is not highly flammable. Humidity is high even during droughts, further impairing the likelihood of fires. However, changes wrought by heavy logging and slash-and-burn agriculture can dramatically change the situation and make degraded forests susceptible to burning. Thus Indonesia has seen a significant increase in fires in recent years, suffering from fires following droughts in 1982-83, 1987, 1991, 1994 and now notably, 1998. Logging debris and dense undergrowth spurred by large holes in the canopy created felled trees provide fuel to feed fires. Even more damning, a recent study over Borneo revealed that certain types of heavy smoke may block precipitation in some areas while producing rain in others. So fires that would normally be extinguished burn even longer by staving off normal precipitation. Pressure on Kalimantan's rainforests has been building for 30 years. Government relocation programs in the past few decades encouraged people to move from small, densely populated islands to remote, vast and sparsely populated islands like Borneo. The pressure from increased population has resulted in the uncontrolled conversion of rainforests to land for agricultural use. CIFOR now estimates annual deforestation rates at 4.3 million acres (1.7 million hectares) and the World Bank predicts that if deforestation continues at the present rate, lowland rainforests in Kalimantan will be completely eradicated around 2010.
More on Borneo: Secret power plan would devastate Sarawak's rainforest with 12 new hydropower plants (7/23/2008) Environmentalists have called on the Malaysian government to develop a comprehensive energy policy, following the discovery of secret plans to build a network of power plants across interior Sarawak on the island of Borneo. Orangutans persist in islands amid a sea of oil palm plantations (7/17/2008) Orangutan are surviving in forest islands in a sea of oil palm plantations in Malaysia, reports a new survey by a government-backed conservation initiative. The finding underscores the need to protect critical forest areas for the endangered primates as forest continues to fall in southeast Asia at a rate that is the highest of any of the world's tropical forest regions. Researchers fit Bornean elephants with satellite collars to track social behvaior (7/14/2008) Three Bornean Elephants were fitted with satellite collars over the past week in the Kinabatangan marking the beginning of the first study on their social structure. Rainforest destruction becomes industry-driven, concentrated geographically (6/30/2008) New analysis of global deforestation reveals that the bulk of tropical forest loss is occurring in a small number of countries. The research — published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) — shows that Brazil accounts for nearly half of global deforestation, nearly four times that of the next highest country, Indonesia, which makes up about an eighth of worldwide forest clearing. Sarawak to continue logging forests for oil palm plantations (6/30/2008) Despite a prime minister's directive banning conversion of forest reserves for oil palm plantations, the Malaysian state of Sarawak will continue to open up forest land for oil palm plantations, reports the New Straits Times. Sarawak to continue logging forests for oil palm plantations (6/26/2008) Despite a prime minister's directive banning conversion of forest reserves for oil palm plantations, the Malaysian state of Sarawak will continue to open up forest land for oil palm plantations, reports the New Straits Times. Hunting, deforestation wipe out 6 of 7 hornbill species in Borneo park (6/14/2008) Logging, forest conversion for palm oil, and hunting have triggered a precipitous drop in key wildlife populations in Malaysia's Lambir Hills National Park, on the island of Borneo, said a biologist speaking at a scientific conference in Paramaribo, Suriname. From "kampung boy" to conservation force in the rainforest of Borneo (5/27/2008) Waidi Sinun oversees three extraordinarily diverse conservation areas in the Malaysian rainforest, a career shaped by a love for the environment stemming from childhood memories, as well as the foundation that fostered his education. Unilever admits it can't trace origin of palm oil used in its products (4/21/2008) Unilever has admitted to Greenpeace that it can't trace the origin of palm oil supplied by firms operating in Indonesia. The relevation suggests that efforts to improve the sustainability of Indonesian palm oil have stalled as large tracts of rainforest continue to fall for the establishment of new oil palm plantations on the islands of Borneo, New Guinea, and Sumatra. Borneo's pygmy elephants are an alien species (4/18/2008) A new study suggests that the Borneo pygmy elephant -- one of Borneo's best known and charismatic animals -- is actually an invasive species introduced from a neighboring island by a former sultan. The finding offers hope that in Borneo, the elephant can avoid the fate that befell it in its native Java: extinction. Photos by late Borneo rainforest hero, indigenous rights activist go online (4/17/2008) On April 19th over 10,000 of Bruno Manser's photographs will be made available to the public on-line. The pictures are rare documentation of the nomadic Penan peoples from the Malaysian state of Sarawak in Borneo. Swiss environmentalist Bruno Manser proved an unflinching and passionate advocate for the Penans in the 1990s as their territory was increasingly deforested by industrial logging companies. Palm oil boycott an unrealistic approach to conserving biodiversity (4/15/2008) Boycotting palm oil produced in Southeast Asia in an "unrealistic" and "ineffective" approach to conserving the region's fast-disappearing rainforests, said a Princeton University researcher speaking at a conference on the sustainability of palm oil. Instead, NGOs should focus on engaging and working with the palm oil industry to reduce its impact on the environment. Addressing the first International Palm Oil Sustainability Conference in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia, Princeton biologist Dr. David S. Wilcove said that the palm oil industry is too important to the economies of Indonesia and Malaysia to justify blanket import bans on the edible oil used in food, cosmetics, industrial products, and biodiesel. The palm oil industry contributes to health, education, and infrastructure in rural areas. Malaysia rejects coal project in Borneo rainforest (4/14/2008) Malaysia has rejected a $408 million coal-fired power plant near a protected rainforest area in Sabah, on the island of Borneo. Lungless frog discovered in Borneo (4/11/2008) A lungless frog has been discovered on the island of Borneo. Scientists say the species may shed light on the process of evolution in some organisms. Saving the world's most recently discovered cat species in Borneo (4/10/2008) Last year two teams of scientists announced the discovery of a new species of clouded leopard in Borneo. The news came as conservationists launched a major initiative to conserve a large area of forest on an island where logging and oil palm plantations have consumed vast expanses of highly biodiverse tropical rainforest over the past thirty years. Now a pair of researchers are racing against the clock to better understand the behvaior of these rare cats to see how well they adapt to these changes in and around Danum Valley in Malaysia's Sabah state. Andrew Hearn and Joanna Ross run the Bornean Wild Cat and Clouded Leopard Project, an effort that aims to understand and protect Borneo's threatened wild cats, which include the flat-headed cat (Prionailurus planiceps), marbled cat (Pardofelis marmorata) leopard cat (Prionailurus bengalensis) the endemic bay cat (Catopuma badia) and the Bornean clouded leopard (Neofelis nebulosa). New rule grants rainforest to mining firms in Indonesia for $80/acre (3/10/2008) A new Indonesian rule will grant concessions to mining companies operating in rainforests for as little as $200 per hectare ($80/acre) according to Mining Advocacy Network, a conservation group. Amid accusations of bribery by loggers, Borneo chief's remains to be exhumed (2/19/2008) Police have announced that they plan to exhume the body of Kelesau Naan to discover the cause of death. The Penan chieftain and passionate activist against logging disappeared in October while checking animal traps. His body was found on December 12th of last year. Several bones were broken, leading some to believe that Naan was assassinated because of his longtime work against loggers. Kelesau Naan had been one of the key figures in the Penan community's fight against logging. He was also a plaintiff and witness in a land rights claim that has been awaiting trial since 1998. Malaysia announces $103B development plan for Borneo island (2/13/2008) Malaysia announced a $103 billion development plan for Sarawak, a state in northern Borneo. Borneo's Sabah state will see $32B in investment (2/4/2008) Malaysia put forth a $32.4 billion development plan for Sabah, a rainforest state on the island of Borneo, reports Reuters. Rainforest chief killed in Borneo for his opposition to logging (1/3/2008) Keleasu Naan, a Penan chieftain and longtime activist against logging, disappeared in October while checking animal traps. His tribes' worst fears were confirmed when they found what they believed to be Naan's remains last month. According to the Associated Press, the chieftain's nephew, Michael Ipa, has stated that the body had several broken bones, leading Ipa to believe that "he has been killed by people involved in logging". News index | RSS | Add to MyYahoo! Advertisements: Organic Apparel from Patagonia | Insect-repelling clothing |
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