A new UNEP report reveals that 3,000 truckloads of illegal timber, equating to 2.4 million FT3, have been seized by Indonesian officals in recent times, with 70,000m3 of processed wood confiscated in the East Kalimantan province alone, and a spate of arrests occuring at the same time.
This has prompted UNEP executive director Achim Steiner to say: “We can only applaud the efforts of the Indonesian authorities to stamp out illegal logging and illegal timber trading.”
But the report predicts 98% of the country’s lowland rainforests will have been destroyed by 2022, 10 years earlier than previous projections had suggested.
In addition, UNEP has said that the future of orang-utans in the country is in serious doubt, with the current rate of deforestation threatening to wipe out their protected habitats within five years.
UNEP suggests 88% of Indonesian timber is illegally felled, with illegal loggers operating in all but four of the country’s 41 national parks and 5.2 million acres of forest removed every year with a value of US$4bn.
