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GOs affiliated with the Mount Leuser National Park (TNGL) Rescue Coalition have urged President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo to take immediate action to stop widespread illegal logging in the national park.

Coalition spokesman Panut Hadisiswoyo said the group would inform Jokowi that the TNGL Center, law enforcement agencies and local administrations had failed to curb forest conversion that has taken place in TNGL since the 1990s.

Panut said Jokowi needed to intervene directly because relevant stakeholders responsible for preserving the national park, such as the Environment and Forestry Ministry, tended to turn a blind eye to forest conversion. In addition, TNGL Rescue Coalition’s attempts to convey ideas to stop the encroachment were never responded to, he added.

He claimed the ministry had never conducted observation in the field to see the extent of the damage.

According to Panut, widespread forest conversion in TNGL is carried out to make way for plantations and settlements for people who fled the former Aceh conflict and other local communities.

Panut said that based on the ministry’s decrees 856 and 879 in 2014, TNGL, spanned a total of 838,872 hectares across Aceh and North Sumatra provinces, but actual forested areas had diminished due to damage caused by conversion, especially in Langkat regency, North Sumatra.

“The most severely deforested area is in Langkat regency where around 20 percent of the national park area has been converted into plantations and settlements,” Panut told journalists at a press conference in Medan on Monday.

Panut, who is also director of the Orangutan Information Center (OIC), said the extensive forest conversion threatened the habitats of rare wildlife species in the park. He said 50 orangutans died each year due to the impacts of rampant illegal logging in TNGL.

Besides orangutans, he said, the Sumatran elephant was also endangered as only 500 remained in the park, 40 of which were in Langkat.

He added that extensive forest conversion had put TNGL, the oldest national park in Indonesia, on “the list of world heritage [sites] in danger” according to the UNESCO World Heritage Committee in 2011.

Panut said TNGL could lose its world heritage status if it failed to overcome encroachment by 2018.

Nizar Tarigan, an activist from the Leuser International Foundation, said the government must not lose out to forest encroachers should and stop forest conversion in TNGL. He added that it was time the government stopped illegal logging to prevent further damage to wildlife and the environment.

“TNGL is a state asset and must be saved. The state should not lose out to encroachers,” said Nizar.

North Sumatra Police chief spokesperson Sr. Comr. Rina Sari Ginting acknowledged that the handling of deforestation in TNGL had become very complicated because housing and public facilities, such as schools, houses of worship and electricity infrastructure had been established in deforested areas. Rina suggested that all stakeholders be involved in seeking solutions.

“The issue should not only be handled by the police. All stakeholders must sit together so the issue does not become more complicated,” she said.