Jakarta – Eighteen syndicates of illegal loggers operating from Java, Sumatra and Kalimantan cost the state an annual Rp1.2 trillion (US$125 million) in lost revenue.

Jakarta – Four local non-governmental organizations have threatened to call for a boycott by Indonesia's aid donors unless the government puts an immediate stop to illegal logging and t

Vaudine England – Near Jember, deep in East Java, is the Meru Betiri National Park, home to near-extinct panthers and one of the last great rainforests.

George J.

Jack Rieley – Southeast Asia contains seventy percent of the world's total tropical peatland, mostly in Indonesia and Malaysia.

Yogi Arief Nugraha/Hendra & BI, Pekanbaru – Illegal logging activities have continued to go on in Riau forests South Sumatra.

Bengkulu – Officials here said on Monday 48,000 of 251,000 hectares of conserved forest in the province have been damaged by illegal logging.

Jakarta – The government will take to court four regents from East Kalimantan for allegedly selling forest concessions, a senior official of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry sai

Chaidir Anwar Tanjung, Pekanbaru – Protected forests at Bukit Suligi in Kampar regency, Riau province on Sumatra's west coast, are being plundered without local authorities lifting a fi

Jakarta – An average of 1.6 million ha of Indonesia's forests are being destroyed every year, mostly by illegal loggers with powerful connections here and abroad, a report said yesterda

Arifin A/Lyndal Meehan, Jakarta – NGOs and students in the province of Jambi, Sumatra, have called on the Minister of Forestry and Plantations, Nurmahmudi Ismail, to immediately close P

Roderick Bowen, Palembang – The vegetation fires along the Riau – North Sumatra border that started on July 7 and sent smoke across the Straits of Malacca until July 20 should have been

Jakarta – They may have become an annual ritual, but Indonesia's forest fires are by no means welcome events in this country – as well as in neighbouring nations that often ended up cho

Jakarta – "I am really ashamed every time my counterparts from Malaysia and Singapore call me to complain about the haze coming from Sumatra," State Minister of Environment Sony Keraf s

Jakarta – Almost 20.1-million ha, or about half the 40-million ha of forests in Indonesia, have been damaged by fires and farming, Forestry and Plantations Minister Nur Mahmudi Ismail h

Marianne Kearney, Pekanbaru – Indonesian police, forestry employees and plantation companies are failing to fight the fires which have been burning on dozens of plantations over the las

Jakarta – More than 30 companies are under investigation for their alleged roles in the recent forest fires in Riau, a provincial administration official said on Wednesday.

Dharmastuti/SWA & LM, Jakarta – The thick palls of smoke choking North Sumatra and Riau Provinces has compelled the Ministry of Forestry and Plantations to announce that it plans to

Marianne Kearney, Jakarta – Claims by the Indonesian authorities about serious efforts being made to stem plantation fires in Sumatra are being challenged by environmentalists who say t

Alex Kirby – A report by the World Resources Institute says the fires are symptomatic of "a far greater disaster – the systematic plunder and destruction of south-east Asia's greatest r

Jakarta – Dense haze, from forest and brush fires on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, forced the temporary closure of its most important airport yesterday, officials said.

Vaudine England, Jakarta – Corruption and weak law enforcement promise to make the polluting haze caused by Indonesian forest fires a perennial problem.

Maryadi/Lyndal Meehan, Jakarta – Smog in and around Pontianak, West Kalimantan, caused by slash and burn land clearing has reached hazardous levels while the local government has yet to

C.A Tanjung/SWA & LM, Jakarta – Thick smoke blanketing Pekanbaru, the capital of Riau Province, Sumatra, since Wednesday has been attributed to land clearing activities by businesse

Jakarta – A government sweep in Tarakan, East Kalimantan last week allegedly found indications of involvement in the multi- billion dollar Borneo illegal timber trade of Malaysian milit

Singapore – Mild haze in Singapore and Malaysia could rapidly get worse, with more smoke blowing in from forest fires on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, officials said Wednesday.

Jakarta – The theft and smuggling of logs in the country is highly organized and supported by security personnel and some officials, a top government official said.

Bogor – Indonesia's forests are disappearing at a rate of 4,000 hectares a day and the government appears to be unable to do anything about it, experts said.

Jakarta – Almost half of the country's mangrove forests have disappeared since 1982, causing land abrasion by the sea and threatening biota living in that environment, activists said on

Tempo, Jakarta – The existing forest resource management system, which has been regularly exploited and abused, will be replaced by a balanced and sustainable forest management system.

Jakarta – Thick haze from forest fires shrouded several towns in Sumatra on Friday, keeping Pekanbaru, Riau, mostly in the dark during daylight hours.

Marianne Kearney, Jakarta – Indonesian authorities have identified at least 10 companies responsible for starting fires in the Riau province but are facing problems prosecuting them.

Indonesia's environmental monitoring agency, Bapadal, has been trying to get hard evidence to nail those responsible for the dangerous levels of haze that has covered the Riau province

Vaudine England and Agencies, Pekanbaru – The end of Indonesia's rainy season is once again revealing the chaos created by allowing plantation owners and farmers to clear land by settin

Marianne Kearney, Riau – Where there's smoke there is fire but in Riau province, central Sumatra, finding the source of the fire and who started it is not always easy.

Marianne Kearney, Pekanbaru – Just across the Malacca Strait from Singapore, was yesterday enveloped in a blanket of haze as over 100 fires blazed for the third day this week.

Singapore (AP) – Fires have broken out on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, where land-clearing blazes caused severe pollution in much of Southeast Asia in 1997, officials in Singapore

Tim Dodd, Jakarta – Indonesia's tropical forests are responsible for one of the country's largest export sectors – wood, pulp and paper products worth $7.5 billion in 1998.

Jakarta – Indonesia's illegal logging industry is backed by high-level corruption, an international environmental group charged here on Wednesday, as the World Bank said the country's c

Jakarta – Indonesian forest and ground fires in Sumatra and Borneo island are on the rise again after dissipating in recent rains, satellite images produced by the Indonesia Space Agenc

Jakarta – Fires which have resumed in Indonesia's Sumatra and Kalimantan regions have ravaged at least 5,561 hectares of forest and scrub in the past month, a report said Saturday.

Jakarta – Logging and forest fires are destroying rainforests and the wildlife they support, government authorities and environmentalists warned yesterday.

Keith B.

Jakarta – About 3,000 civilians have been roped in to help put out forest fires in the Indonesian province of Riau which have caused pollution to hit hazardous levels and the authoritie

Jakarta – The Indonesian government needs to act soon to stop forest fires spiralling out of control in a repeat of the widespread disaster in 1997, the country's leading environmental

John Aglionby, Medan – Dozens of uncontrolled forest fires are breaking out every day across western Indonesia, blanketing much of south-east Asia in a polluted haze and raising fears t

Singapore – Singapore was enveloped Thursday by haze from raging plantation fires largely in the Indonesian island of Sumatra, the meteorological service department said.

Fires burning in central Sumatra have once again blanketed Singapore in a haze that has pushed up pollution levels in the city-state famed for its "clean and green" image.

[The following is a translation of a message sent to Down To Earth on December 9 from Padang, Sumatra.

The Indonesian forest fires of 1997 resulted in over USD 3 billion in damages, according to a study partly funded by Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and releas