Nigel Sizer finds that it’s sometimes the authorities who are doing illegal logging in Aceh in Indonesia. 

The Pride campaign with Mapayah Foundation, a local NGO with three staff, is focused on abating illegal logging in two spectacular forest reserves in the Aceh Besar District. I drove up into the woods accompanied by our campaign manager, Cut Meurah Intan, and a village leader. He explained that he’s extremely concerned about illegal logging that is getting ever closer to the village’s only source of fresh water, a small mountain stream. If the stream dries up they’ll have to move, he said.

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Campaign manager Cut Meurah Intan examines illegally cut wood. 

We drove round the hillside on a rough logging road to find the culprits – the Indonesian military. They’ve even put up a large sign proclaiming that they are logging in the area and have a license to do so. But it’s the military chief, not the Department of Forestry, who has authorized the logging.

Further down the hillside, still in forest that is legally protected, the local police have also gotten in on the act, this time building a huge new headquarters sprawling over 75 acres. Law breaking in Indonesia, even by the police, is here even more brazen than I have seen elsewhere. Perhaps even worse. The new police facilities were financed through the Indonesian government agency that manages funds donated for reconstruction after the tsunami.

Pride will build local support for forest conservation. The village leader then plans to use that support to mobilize the community against the illegal loggers.

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