Asian forests

Press, 18 May 1989, Page 12

Asian forests

Sir, —“The Press” is to be commended for publishing the article (May 10) which describes the Japanese as “the leading villains in the destruction of South-East Asia’s forests.” A book, “Worlds Apart” (1984), by Robin Hanbury-Tenison, a founder of Survival International, describes timber milling on the island of Siberut (130 km by 50km), off the coast of Sumatra. Muslim police, he says, would drive the local people off the land wanted for milling, burning down the houses of those who refused to move. Bulldozers would then move in, eventually stripping the land of all vegetation. The soil being “very weak,” the heavy tropical rains would then wash it completely away. Productive jungle, growing sago palms on which people fed themselves and their pigs year after year, has thus been turned into “bare moonscapes.” This is aggression, different from that of World War 11, but equally brutal and more permanent.—Yours, etc., MARK D. SADLER. May 14, 1989.