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Semarang. The Central Java administration intends to plant 40 million trees this year under the One Man, One Tree program launched by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, provincial forestry office chief Sri Puryono KS said on Wednesday.

“We have already begun to cultivate 5.6 million new trees,” he said on the sidelines of an event to familiarize the public with the program that was launched nationally in February and runs until the end of the year. “Because it is the dry season, we have stopped planting trees for the time being, but we will be planting again from October to December,” Puryono said.

Asked about the availability of tree seedlings, he said 25 percent of the stock would be provided by the government and the rest by private companies and businessmen concerned about the environment.

“At present, we have promises of 22.6 million seedlings from PT Perhutani and 16 million from other companies,” Puryono said, adding that in 2008 the Central Java administration had planted 34 million trees.

The chief of PT Perhutani’s Unit I in Central Java, Heru Siswanto, said his company’s contribution would be ready for planting by October.

He said Perhutani also had a reforestation program for 2010 that would begin to be implemented this year.

Four years ago, he said, there were 120,000 hectares of barren land in the Pemalang and Balupulang areas of Central Java, but because of the continuous tree planting program, now only 12,400 hectares needed to be reforested.

Elsewhere, the Ministry of Forestry has said that currently it could only allocate funds for the rehabilitation of 100,000 hectares of “very critical river” basins in 2010.

“Actually our target was for 500,000 hectares, with funding of Rp 2.7 trillion [$267 million], but only 100,000 hectares has received approval,” said Basah Hernowo, the director of forestry and water resources conservation at the National Development Planning Board (Bappenas).

Some of the funding would come from the 2010 national state budget, while the remainder might have to be obtained through a special allocation fund, or DAK.

The House of Representatives had approved the additional funding for the rehabilitation of critical river basins from DAK but a final decision from the Finance Ministry was still pending, Basah said in Bogor.

A total of 60 river basins had been identified throughout the country as having undergone degradation since 2000 due to an increase in critical and arid land, tree felling and illegal logging on protected forest land.

The Forestry Ministry itself has included 108 river basins on the priority list for rehabilitation in the 2010-2014 period.

Basah said there was no way to save the river basins in the country other than through replanting and reforestation.

“The law requires that 30 percent of the river basins in the country must be green, but the facts shows otherwise,” he said.

“In Java alone, reforestation of the river basins has reached less than 30 percent.”


Antara