SAN FRANCISCO - March 19 - Rainforest Action Network sent letters to 163 U.S. tropical wood importers and members of the International Wood Products Association calling for an immediate corporate embargo on forest-based products from Indonesia’s ravaged rainforests. The letter follows Science magazine’s publication of new research from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies confirming ‘expansive and accelerating deforestation’ of the country’s ‘protected areas’ and calling for ‘immediate transnational management’ to end the massacre.

In the March 18, 2004 letter, Rainforest Action Network executive director Michael Brune reiterated Indonesian President Megawati Soekarnoputri’s plea for an international moratorium to help stop illegal logging. It affirmed widespread acknowledgement that reduced-impact logging and stump-to-store bar coding schemes have failed, quoting the Indonesian Minister of Forests’ admission that “it has become clear that Indonesia will not overcome illegal logging without stemming the foreign demand for Indonesian logs and forestry products.” Mr. Brune challenges U.S. companies to join Centex Homes, International Paper and Lanoga Corporation and suspend purchasing from the region until legal supplies are verifiable. A copy of the letter is available at www.ran.org/indonesiamoratorium.

The February 13, 2004 issue of Science magazine exposes the environmental destruction caused by decades of corruption and crime. Satellite and field-based analyses conclusively show that since 1985 over 50 percent of protected lowland forests have been destroyed. Despite a declining resource base caused by decimated forests, Indonesian loggers and mills have maintained excessive production capacities. Over the past two decades, the volume of timber exports from Borneo has exceeded all wood exports from tropical Africa and South America combined. Most legal Indonesian concessions have been depleted of their harvestable timber and abandoned by loggers who have illegally expanded their uncontrolled clearcuts into protected areas. Except for the remote Betung Kerihun National Park–also currently being logged–large, intact protected lowlands no longer exist in Kalimantan. The team of international scientists concluded that “stemming the flow of illegal wood from Borneo requires international efforts” and that a failure to institute solutions will lead to “irreversible ecological degradation.”

“Indonesia is ground zero for illegal logging,” said Michael Brune, executive director of Rainforest Action Network. “Corrupt logging companies are pillaging Indonesia’s virgin rainforests and turning Borneo into a barren wasteland. American corporations that are trading in illegal Indonesian timber are as guilty as the criminals who supply them.”

According to an October 27, 2003 BusinessWeek editorial titled “Indonesia’s Chainsaw Massacre,” the country’s rainforests are “disappearing at a rate equivalent to the area of 300 soccer fields every hour” to offer “Western consumers cheap lumber.” Rainforest Action Network’s 2003 report, “Importing Destruction,” documents the connections of U.S. companies to the international market for Indonesian tropical plywood.

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