Her Excellency Megawati Sukarnoputri
President, Republic of Indonesia
Presidential Palace
Jakarta Istana Negara, Indonesia

RE: Moratorium on logging in Indonesian rainforests

Dear President Sukarnoputri,

I join millions of citizens worldwide who are applauding your pending decision to a implement a temporary halt of all logging in the rainforests of Indonesia.

Logging, both legal and illegal, in Indonesia's remaining primary rainforests is causing massive extinction and increasing poverty for people whose subsistence depends on healthy ecosystems. According to the World Resources Institute, your nation has lost forty percent, or 64 million hectares, of its original forest cover in the last fifty years. The rate of deforestation is accelerating, from 1 million hectares destroyed each year in the 1980s to a current 2 million hectares loss per year. Indonesia's lowland forests harbor the country's highest biodiversity and timber value. At current rates of forest loss, the region of Sumatra's lowland forest will be gone by 2005, and Kalimantan's lowland forest will have been devastated by 2010.

The logging moratorium will allow your government to address the rights of indigenous peoples, as well as illegal logging that is being concealed by fraud in the wood products industry, and also transitions to sustainable economies that are not dependent on the rainforest destruction caused by logging, mining and monoculture plantations.

Please make the just and crucial decision to halt logging in Indonesia's natural forests as your lasting legacy to the world's species and future generations of humanity.

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