D

espite tight security in the Mount Leuser National Park, concerns mount over continued illegal logging activities in the protected forest areas following the recent arrests of members of an illegal logging syndicate.

A joint team from the National Park and Forest Wildlife Protection Unit in Besitang, Langkat regency, North Sumatra, arrested three suspects on Wednesday.

The activities of the three suspects were monitored 10 days prior to the arrest, head of Mount Leuser National Park Misran said. The suspects were then arrested while transporting the logs they allegedly cut in the conservation area. “We arrested them together with 52 logs of resin wood that they illegally logged from the national park area,” Misran said on Thursday.

The three men, identified as Suhadi, Supri and Muliono, were on their way to Sawit Seberang district in Langkat when they were apprehended.

Head of the park’s region III national park management division, Ardi Andono, said the three told the officers they had bought the logs from someone identified only as M, who illegally cut the lumber in the park. The police and his office were currently seeking M, whose whereabouts were already known, he said.

The arrests of the three members of the illegal logging syndicate were the first in the last three years, thanks to the tight security measures applied around the National Park area, Ardi said. The heightened security had hindered illegal loggers in transporting the logs out of the park.

Besitang has so far been the area most affected by illegal logging activities in Langkat regency. Officials have detected at least nine spots of illegal logging activities in Besitang, a wide area spanning from Buaya Beach to Damar Hitam. There were also at least 200 illegal houses and schools in Besitang.

“They have resided there for years so it’s difficult to move them from the location,” Ardi told The Jakarta Post.

The illegal logging activities in Mount Leuser National Park area had been ongoing for a long time, especially after evacuees from the Aceh conflict moved there in 2000. Ever since then, illegal logging activities have been rampant.

He also said that many of the encroached areas had been turned into rubber and oil palm plantations.

Data from 1997 at the Forestry Ministry showed that the National Park covered an area of 1.10 million ha in Aceh and North Sumatra provinces. The figure had decreased to only 800,000 ha in 2014 as a result of encroachments and conversions to accommodate Aceh’s provincial spatial planning.

Meanwhile in Muarojambi regency in Jambi, Mestong Police arrested Novriandi, 47, after he was caught transporting 29 cubic meter of lumbers without proper documents. The Tanah Datar, West Sumatra, resident was arrested in Sukadamai village on the Jambi-Palembang road in the early hours of Saturday, Jambi Police spokesman Adj. Sr. Comr. Kuswahyudi Tresnadi said on Sunday.

— Jon Afrizal contributed to this story from Jambi