http://www.thejakartapost.com/detailgeneral.asp?fileid=20070922165943&irec=1
Aceh losing 20,000 hectares of forest a year BANDA ACEH (Antara): Illegal logging destroys around 20,769 hectares of Acehnese rain forest every year, the Indonesian Environmental Forum (Walhi) says. Walhi's executive director Bambang Antariksa said Saturday the burst in illegal logging had been triggered by reconstruction efforts after the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami that devastated the province. Bambang said a total of 374,327 hectares of Aceh's rain forests had been destroyed as of 2006, with some being cleared for infrastructure such as roads. He added that deforestation had also affected the province's river basins. Of the total 1,524,624 hectares of river basin in Aceh, around 46 percent had been degraded, he said. In the year 2006, 39 floods and landslides occurred in Aceh, killing 20 people and destroying 249 houses, dozens of bridges and dikes and over two kilometers of irrigation channels, Walhi reported. The organization earlier accused the Aceh and Nias Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Agency (BRR) of contributing significantly to the destruction of Aceh's environment. "The BRR has (contributed to) a major domino effect in ecological destruction in Aceh because projects funded by BRR often ignore the status and procedures of protected areas," Bambang said.
