T

he office of Mount Leuser National Park (TNGL) plans to relocate thousands of squatters who have been making a living through illegal logging in the protected forests of the national park in Langkat regency, North Sumatra.

The government has reportedly provided around 1,400 hectares of land in Solok, West Sumatra, to relocate the squatters.

TNGL office head Andi Basrul said the planned relocations would be coordinated with the offices of the coordinating political, legal and security affairs minister and coordinating human development and culture minister to ensure they ran smoothly.

Andi acknowledged that his office had repeatedly attempted to relocate the squatters from TNGL, but had always failed as they refused to move.

More than 5,000 squatters are currently living in TNGL, most of them former displaced persons of the Aceh conflict and outsiders, such as those from Medan and Binjai. They can be found in Barak Induk, Tower, Lapangan Tembak and Sei Minyak, all in Besitang district, Langkat regency.

'€œThey have been encroaching on the national park since 1998 and have cleared almost 20,000 hectares of the protected forests, part of which they turned into residences and the rest into oil palm farms,'€ Andi told The Jakarta Post on Friday.

He said that in an effort to stop forest conversion and illegal logging activities in TNGL, the government, through a forestry ministerial decree in 2012, allocated around 1,400 hectares of land to relocate the squatters.

A relocation program was once carried out in 2013, when 21 squatter families were relocated to Palembang, South Sumatra.

Andi expressed hoped the government could immediately respond to the squatters situation failing which could cause potential conflict and further environmental degradation.

'€œRelocation is likely the best solution to restore the function of the forest,'€ said Andi, who feared the function of the forest and the balanced ecosystem in TNGL would face the threat of extinction.

Wildlife Conservation Society Indonesia Program (WCSIP) conservation area specialist Munawar Kholis said it supported the TNGL office'€™s plan to immediately relocate the squatters from within the
national park.

He added that the central government should prioritize resolving forest conversion matters in TNGL. However, before relocating the squatters, said Munawar, the government should prepare the proper infrastructure and facilities at the relocation site in Solok.

He said that in a recent coordination meeting, the TNGL office expressed that the damaged forested areas had become more extensive.

Munawar said that based on forestry ministry data from 1997, the TNGL had spanned 1,095,592 hectares, but in 2014, the area had declined to only 800,000 hectares.

While in Langkat regency, more than 30,000 hectares of forested areas in TNGL have been damaged due to illegal logging.