Huge Paper Company Trashing Pristine Sumatra Forest

January 2008. An investigative report has found that paper giant Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) and its affiliates are constructing a massive logging highway that will split in half one of Indonesia’s most important forests. The legally questionable highway threatens to devastate one of Sumatra’s last large forest blocks, home to two tribes of indigenous people and endangered elephants, tigers and orangutans.

 

The Bukit Tigapuluh Forest Landscape in central Sumatra contains some of the richest biodiversity on Earth, with more than 250 mammal and bird species. The highway allows logging trucks easier access to APP’s pulp mills in Jambi Province; the clearing took place after APP’s forestry operations in neighbouring Riau Province were halted due to a police investigation of illegal logging. APP partners have cleared an estimated 20,000 hectares of natural forest in the Bukit Tigapuluh landscape and some of the clearing appears to be in violation of Indonesian law.

Global Priority’ Landscape For Tiger Conservation
The forest is home to two tribes of indigenous people. The landscape also was designated one of just 20 ‘global priority’ landscapes for tiger conservation by a global team of tiger scientists in 2006. It is the location of a successful conservation project to reintroduce orangutans, which now reside in a part of the landscape that is proposed for protected status but is already being cleared by APP-affiliated companies, the report found.

Conservationists urge APP and its partners to stop clearing any more natural forest whose ecological, environmental and cultural conservation values have not been determined and to stop sourcing any of its purchased wood from such forests. Conservationists also call on the government to ensure an end to all forms of forest clearance found to violate national Indonesian laws and regulations.

 

’Bukit Tigapuluh Landscape Should Be Protected’
‘With its high conservation values, the Bukit Tigapuluh Landscape should be protected and thus all natural forest clearance in the area has to be stopped,’ said Ian Kosasih, WWF-Indonesia’s Forest Program Director. ‘APP is one of the world’s largest paper companies and we believe its global customers expect it to act like a responsible corporate citizen. The company should commission independent assessments of the conservation values of these areas in a publicly transparent manner before any conversion takes place, and commit to protect and manage conservation values identified in these areas.’

Indonesian law has a set of criteria and requirements to be fulfilled prior to conversion of natural forest. Yet evidence found during the investigation indicates APP-affiliated companies converted hundreds of hectares before fulfilling these requirements, thus violating Indonesian law. Part of the area being cleared is in a proposed Specific Protected Area that serves as habitat for about 90 Sumatran orangutans recently introduced into the area for the first time in more than 150 years.