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| Last pristine forests under threat |
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2006/4/19
The last of Indonesia’s pristine forests, in the remote province of Papua, are under threat and all commercial logging there should be halted, environment watchdog groups said.
“A handful of logging companies have wiped out much of Indonesia’s forests. They must be stopped from finishing off our last intact forests in Papua,” Emmy Hafild, from international environment group Greenpeace, told a press conference here. She said that the government must put in place “a moratorium on large-scale commercial logging activists” in the intact forest landscapes of Indonesia, starting with Papua.
A large swathe of Papua’s forests - where researchers recently discovered dozens of new plant and animal species - have already been allocated to logging companies that export timber to Japan, China, the European Union and the United States, said environmentalists. Scientists from Conservation International last December found a virtual “lost world” home to dozens of new species, including frogs, butterflies, and an orange-faced honeyeater bird in Papua’s remote Foja mountains.
Indonesia has already lost 72 percent of its intact forests, and deforestation rates in the archipelago are among the highest in the world, Greenpeace says. AFP |
| Source:http://www.dailytimes.com.pk |
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