GrrlScientist is an evolutionary biologist, ornithologist, aviculturist, birder and freelance science and nature writer. A native of the Pacific Northwest, she relocated from Seattle to NYC with her parrots after earning a BS in Microbiology (emphasis in Virology) and PhD in Zoology (Ornithology) from the University of Washington. In NYC, she was the Chapman Postdoctoral Fellow at the American Museum of Natural History for two years, pursuing part of her "dream" research project by reconstructing a molecular phylogeny of the parrots of the South Pacific islands. GrrlScientist has written a blog about science since 4 August 2004 (the early years are archived 
tags: South Pacific Islands, Indonesia, rainforest destruction, environment
Southwestern region of the island nation, Indonesia. The pale land mass to the bottom, right is Australia while the pale region to the upper left is southeast Asia.
Image source.
Partially because many species of my research birds are endemic there, Indonesia is my most favorite country which I've never visited. So I am saddened and disturbed to learn that Indonesia is being awarded a rather dubious distinction. In fact, so tremendous is the destruction of its rainforests, that Indonesia will be listed in the 2008 edition of the Guiness Book of World Records as the country with the fastest rate of forest destruction on the planet.
According to GreenPeace, Indonesia is destroying an area of forest equivalent to 300 football fields every hour. It has already lost 72 percent of its large intact ancient forests and half of what remains is threatened. Of course, this means that many of its unique endemic birds, animals and plants are likewise threatened, endangered or already extinct.
The Guiness Book of World records confirmed to GreenPeace that its entry will read as follows: "Of the 44 countries which collectively account for 90 percent of the world's forests, the country which pursues the world's highest annual rate of deforestation is Indonesia with 1.8 million ha (4,447,896 acres) per year between 2000-2005 -- a rate of 2 per cent annually or 51 square km (20 square miles) every day."
These data were taken from the Third Working Group meeting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) taking place in Bangkok because as much as 25 percent of greenhouse gas emissions come from tropical forest clearance.
Indonesia's forests cover over 120 million hectares but their forestry sector is plagued by lawlessness, corruption and forest plunder, which the Indonesian Government is failing to control. International demand for timber and paper, as well as commodities such as palm oil, are driving this destruction.
Comments
I have visited Indonesia, so this report comes as no surprise to me. I lived for a year in a National Park in Borneo which was practically being logged out from underneath us. Ironically, Indonesia's deforestation isn't completely Indonesia's fault. A lot of the funding for local logging are coming from international sources like Malaysia, who touts their keen sense of environmental preservation. They protect their lands, gain money through eco-tourism, then duck down to Indonesia and log the heck out of it.
Posted by: TSS | May 3, 2007 3:00 PM
To top it off, its neighbors - Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand - periodically have to tolerate haze generated from strip-burning of the rainforests by plantation farmers, and the Indonesian government has been unable to do anything about it in over a decade.
Posted by: Elia Diodati | May 3, 2007 5:01 PM
Elia,
Wouldn't it be more accurate to say "the Indonesian goverment will not do anything about it" rather than "been unable to.."
I do recall articles in the Straits Times (many years ago) indicating who and what organisations where doing the deliberate burning, seems they all had immunity due to their connections.
Posted by: Chris' Wills | May 4, 2007 8:18 AM