No. 55 July-
Sept 1998		   Indonesia on the net

The renewed fires in Kalimantan drew attention to a global disaster happening before our eyes. ED COLIJN walks us through just some of the links in his extensive nature conservation homepage.
 

The place to start: http://www.bart.nl /~edcolijn/index.html. My apologies for advertising my own site so shamelessly! But it has all the information you ever wanted, including data on most proteced areas, mammal and bird checklists, links to all the sites mentioned below, and more.

Indonesia's natural resources are protected and maintained by the Directorate General of Forest Protection and Nature Conservation of the Indonesian Ministry of Forestry (PHPA). The PHPA site (http://www2.bonet.co.id/dephut/dephut.htm) has lists of Indonesia's gazetted national parks, protected wildlife and several maps. However, the best site for maps, including protected area maps, is Pete Loud's Maps of Indonesia (http://users.powernet.co.uk/mkmarina/).

World

All major world conservation organisations have their own web sites, most of them with information on Indonesia. Certainly the best for conservationists is the World Conservation Monitoring Centre (WCMC) site at http://www.wcmc.org.uk/. WCMC was established by three of the key international organisations working in the field of biodiversity conservation: the World Conservation Union, the World Wide Fund for Nature and the United Nations Environment Programme.

The WCMC site provides information on conservation and sustainable use of the world's living resources, and helps others develop information systems of their own. It includes a list of Indonesia's protected areas, a searchable international list of endangered species known as the Red List, World Heritage sites, forest and coral reef information, and much more.

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) is active in several projects in Indonesia, and their international site is large. The best you can do is access their search page at http://www.panda.org/forms/search.htm and do a search on Indonesia. WWF also has a recently updated page on the global forest fires at http://www.wwf.org/new/fires/home.htm.

Conservation International (CI), one of the leading organisations in the nature conservation field, has several pages on Indonesia, describing some of Java's national parks. Although inhabitated by more than 100 million people and heavily cultivated, Java still has some beautiful national parks. Take a look at http://www.conservation.org/science/cptc /capbuild/unesco/asia/cibodas2/cibodas.htm for more information about the most visited national park in Java, the Gunung Gede Pangrango National Park. Or if you prefer solitude, visit CI's pages about one of Java's most remote and least visited national parks, the Gunung Halimun National Park (http://www.conservation.org/science/cptc/cap build/unesco/asia/halimun/HOME.HTM).

Fires

As you probably know East Kalimantan is burning. The impact of the drought and the fires on East Kalimantan's ecology is disastrous. Most of the forest has been on fire at least once while some parts have been totally destroyed by recurring fires.

Some sites to check out on the East Kalimantan forest fires:

  • Tropenbos: http://www.tropenbos.nl/tropenbos/firenews.html

  • Integrated Forest Fire Mangament Project Indonesia: http://smd.mega.net.id/iffm/index.html

  • Yahoo Current Events: http://headlines.yahoo.com/Full_Coverage/World/Southeas t_Asia_Smog/

  • Southeast Asia haze related sites: http://www.geocities.com/HotSprings/2188/haze.html

  • Hotspots: http://www.kaltimnet.com/hijaubiru/hotspot.htm

  • Balikpapan Orangutan Society: http://www.redcube.nl/bos/

    • Another time we will take a look at some specific sites about flora, birds, reptiles, tigers, and rhinos - magnificent but often endangered species.

    Ed Colijn is a dedicated amateur in the Netherlands. Besides the web site he also operates a mailing list with environmental news about Indonesia.