But it does want to take fewer trees from virgin forests, which now supply virtually all of Indonesia's commercial timber. By the year 2010, officials says, half of the timber should come from plantations. Of Indonesia's estimated 143 million hectares of forest land, some 18.2 million hectares are slated for protection as nature reserves. Logging will be prohibited on a further 30 million hectares, the government says, but this land will be open for other uses, such as tourism. But they aren't accelerating fast enough to deal with the underlying problems.
Indonesian officials say they are doing the best they can.
But as with any developing country, our problem is implementation. We need more money. There is no evidence on Siberut to support Haeruman's view, however. Thanks in part to contact with loggers, but also as a result of government policies, the lives of the Mentawai have certainly changed. But they do not appear to have improved.