Since those estimates were made huge fires have ravaged Indonesian forests during the 1997 to 1998 El Niño associated drought.

China's demand for other natural resources poses new dangers as well, as The Times's report last week on China's planned leveling of the Indonesian tropical forests attests.

Shoppers in Tokyo seeking inexpensive picture frames send loggers deep into Indonesian forests.

Jamaludin said that satellite surveys have shown that Indonesian forests had a total of 2.4 billion cubic metres (3.120 million cubic yards) of wood.

According to a 2007 report published by UNEP, at the rate of deforestation at that time, an estimated 98 percent of Indonesian forest would be destroyed by 2022 due to legal and illegal logging, forest fires and the development of palm oil plantations.

In the Indonesian forests, for instance, some of the fires were set by ordinary villagers - people like Purwadi, a 42-year-old farmer near the Indonesian town of Kuala Tungkal.

In December 1967, Suharto issued regulations for private enterprises wishing to exploit Indonesian forests.

Indonesian Haze Holds On The haze from Indonesian forest fires, which are now four months old, is still spreading illness, ecological destruction and economic hardship across seven nations.

A group of hunter gatherers living in a remote Indonesian forest are thought to have become the first tribe to be officially recognised as tree-dwellers.

In 2011 Officeworks cut ties with paper supplier APRIL over claims that the paper supplier was illegally logging indonesian forests.