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In the heart of the Borneo forest, a village that said no to the chainsaws
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  • SETULANG, Indonesia (AFP) May 01, 2005
    The Borneo village of Setulang was offered 300,000 dollars by loggers who wanted to hack down their trees. The villagers considered the offer, then in a rare stand against the illegal felling that has laid waste to Indonesia's jungles, they refused.

    It wasn't an easy choice for the 200 people of Setulang, who live nestled under a canopy of immense, valuable and sometimes extremely rare trees.

    Many among the village's ethnic Kenyah Uma' Long farmers would have gladly taken the money to improve their basic quality of life. But the residents of Setulang are dependent on the forest for their existence.

    "In our community, opinions were divided between those who wanted to make a deal with the loggers and the others," says Ramses Iwan, a member of the village's council.

    "But some of us have worked in Malaysia where trees have been cut. They told us of the difficulties finding resources. We have thought about our children and we have said no."

    Indonesia, third only to Brazil and Democratic Republic of Congo in terms of forest cover, has been pillaged by "timber barons", merchants who bribe highly placed government officials to ensure they can exploit forests with impunity.

    The dilemma faced by the people of Setulang is repeated almost daily across Southeast Asia, where an area of forest equivalent to half the size of Switzerland is being lost annually in Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea.

    "This is the typical modus operandi of the timber barons. And on the first approach, many villagers say 'yes'," says Hapsoro, a forest campaigner for Greenpeace in Southeast Asia who uses only one name.

    For many villagers the offer of cash is seized upon as it is the first tangible return they have seen from the government-owned land on which they live, Hapsoro says.

    "But after the forest is gone, they realise they have been cheated. They do not have anything left to fulfill their needs, their resources are gone and they are finished."

    Setulang's decision earned it a commendation at a summit in Kyoto, the Japanese city which in 1997 gave its name to a protocol to combat global warming.

    On the banks of the Malinau river, which once carried only dugout canoes to Setulang, gaps in the greenery testify to the demolition in progress. The cacophony of wildlife is being replaced by the rumble of bulldozers, loading logs onto barges bound for Malaysia, China and Vietnam.

    Experts say that most of lowland Borneo's trees will have vanished in 20 years -- in the same way they will have disappeared from the Indonesian regions of Sulawesi and Papua.

    Deforestation in Indonesia is often secret and illegal, abetted by the confusion caused by a power decentralisation in 2000 that put many decisions over logging in the hands of easily-manipulated local officials.

    It is not only the people who suffer. The forests of Kalimantan -- the Indonesian part of Borneo where Setulang, 1,400 kilometres (870 miles) northeast of Jakarta, is located -- are home to unique animal and plant species.

    The International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources says that because of deforestation, there are now as few as 30,000 orangutans left in the wild, most of them in Kalimantan.

    Despite Setulang's stand, the unchecked felling of nearby forest has taken its toll on the Kenyah Uma' Long, polluting the rivers where they fish and destroying the habitat of the wild boars that are their main source of meat.

    Without the trees, says Iwan, his people would struggle to survive.

    "The forest answers many of our needs, from wood for construction, medicine to many types of fruit. It is like a safety net if we run out of rice."

    Not all the people of Setulang are able to resist, joining the loggers to earn cash they hope will allow them to leave their traditional life behind.

    Unscrupulous forestry firms often take advantage of their skill in handling tropical wood, paying them low wages to work as far afield as Brazil, Trinidad, Gabon and Guyana.

    In and around Setulang, experts from the Centre for International Forestry Research avoid telling the Kenyah Uma' Long not to cut down trees, but offer them advice on ways to limit the damage when felling.

    "If their logging practices were a bit better, a lot of animal species could be preserved." says David Kaimowitz, director general of the centre.

    Among their success stories is Lukas Sarun, a 35-year-old who worked with exploitative logging gangs in Malaysia, using helicopters -- an expensive method but one which limits damage by extracting valuable logs without having to clear the land around them.

    Sarun studied further with the centre on returning to Setulang and is now a fierce advocate of environmental protection, wearing a T-shirt with the logo "responsible logging".

    But the villagers of Setulang remain in the minority says Greenpeace's Hapsoro, as despite pledges from the president to combat logging and the arrest of officials, the government is not educating forest communities.




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