Ecoregional Assessment of Biological Diversity in East Kalimantan

East Kalimantan Ecoregional Assessment: Chapter 3 – Portfolio Results & Assessment Summary
E. Cross-cutting Themes in the Planning Area for the Portfolio
Clearly, forest fragmentation is a primary ecological threat that affects the integrity and
capability of forest occurrences to support many of the target species – particularly the highly
arboreal ones such as orangutan and gibbons. Fragmentation can also irreversibly affect the
dynamic nature of ambient humidity which supports numerous rare plant species and the
fauna that rely upon them for survival.
Each linear cut into a forest robs the interior of the closed-canopy-maintained humidity and
creates edges that allow invasive species to intrude as well as providing access to humans
and all they bring with them. In some cases where the linear intrusion is narrow and the
surrounding forest retained, the natural seeding process or re-sprouting of cut trunks can refill
the empty tract. However, the forest structure that maintains the humid dome of a closed
canopy will take decades to restore. None of this natural rehabilitation/restoration is possible
if the roads are continuously traveled or if they are widened by increased usage such as by
logging trucks.
It is rare nowadays that retention of surrounding forest occurs once a linear access has been
created – more often than not it leads to an array of logging activities, fire, and creation of
settlements, agricultural clearing, and poaching of bush meat. Roads and linear access routes
(powerlines, gaslines, timber drag lines) are, in effect, the Pandora’s Box for tropical forest
ecosystems – once opened, they can never completely be put back.
Fire, like access roads, is in the process of irreversibly converting vast areas of tropical forest
ecosystems in Indonesia, particularly on the islands of Sumatra, Sulawesi, and Kalimantan.
Once burned, they do have the potential for significant recovery over 5 to 7 decades to a
similar structure and species composition - if left alone. However, with today’s everexpanding
human population and global trade environment, each burn creates open land that
is soon robbed of its remaining timber, converted to settlements or plantations for exotic
commercially valuable species such as oil and date palms, or farmed over a short period until
the shallow soils are exhausted of all nutrients.
The paradigm of “leave it alone and let it recover” is simply not a reality in the current
exploding human environment in this developing country.
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