Recent satellite data and imagery have detected the construction of what appear to be new roads cutting across primary forest in the Barito River watershed and near a protected area in Kalimantan, the Indonesian portion of the island of Borneo.
Areas in the Barito watershed, which covers numerous districts in Central and South Kalimantan provinces, have seen continuous loss of primary forests in recent decades. Between 2001 and 2019, the watershed lost more than half of its original forest cover, Mongabay previously reported. Another study found that while all types of forest cover in the Barito watershed, including primary forests, mangroves and swamps, decreased between 1990 and 2019, land under plantations increased by nearly 1,114%, from around 39,000 hectares (96,400 acres) in 1990 to more than 470,000 hectares (1.1 million acres) in 2019.
Near-real-time satellite imagery and data from the Global Forest Watch (GFW) monitoring platform show numerous deforestation alerts in primary forest just outside the Sungai Barito protected area. Imagery and data from GFW indicate the creep of plantations and decline in primary forest cover is ongoing.
The alerts reveal the appearance of a network of roads that branch out from a plantation and snake through forest before connecting to another plantation. Much of this clearing activity loss is happening in primary forest, according to data from research published in 2018 in the journal Environmental Research Letters and visualized on GFW.
Mongabay couldn’t confirm what the plantations grow or who they belong to. However, according to data sourced from Indonesia’s Ministry of Forestry and visualized on GFW, the concessions appear to be for wood fiber and oil palm, and the forest where the recent clearing occurred is designated as a production forest. This means the forest can be converted for logging and pulpwood concessions.
Banner image of the new road cutting through primary forest in Kalimantan, Indonesia, courtesy of Global Forest Watch.
Editor’s Note: This story is powered by Places to Watch, a Global Forest Watch (GFW) initiative. Mongabay maintains complete editorial independence over stories reported using GFW data.
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