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AKARTA: With 30 percent of Indonesia’s forests having deteriorated or even been destroyed within the last 60 years, Forestry Minister Zulkifli Hasan is encouraging bloggers to participate in a reforestation campaign.

“It takes all stakeholders, including the social media community, to restore the forests. Bloggers have a strong influence in social media, so they can call on society to join the reforestation campaign,” Minister Zulkifli Hasan said, as quoted by Antara news agency.

He said that the reforestation could be carried out by planting 10 trees per person. He believed that the program could restore Indonesia’s forests in the next 30 years. “To support the effort, I have not issued a new forest permit since 2009,” Zulkifli said during the discussion with the bloggers in South Jakarta.

Data from the ministry states that the forest destruction rate has reached more than 1.08 million hectares per year. As a result, the total area of destroyed forest is 65 million hectares.

Zulkifli said that the causes of forest destruction were exploitation, land use change from forest to plantation and mining. He added that regional autonomy also played a role since the local administrations were allegedly giving permits too readily to foreign investors.

He said that his ministry had provided 500 million trees for the reforestation. People can collect the trees at the ministries and all forestry agencies across Indonesia and they will not be charged as long as the trees are used for reforestation.