The logic of destruction

The government east of here, called East Kutai, has been pressing to have an enclave amounting to more than 10 percent of the park excised from Kutai and officially turned into a subdistrict.

Zairin Zain, a spokesman for the provincial government of East Kalimantan, which supports the enclave plan, said the local authorities believed that they should be allowed to develop it because it had been stripped of wildlife and had been damaged beyond repair.

-- from Humans Intrude on an Indonesian Park.

According to one estimate, illegal logging and deforestation have already reduced Indonesia’s total orangutan population to about 60,000, an 80 percent reduction in the past decade.