To make ends meet in increasingly difficult financial times, many turned to cash-earning ventures, such as timber. Logging moratoria in neighboring countries, such as Thailand, China and PNG, imposed over the last few years, also spurred the demand for cheap timber from Indonesia.

Implementation of regional autonomy in 2001 seems to be contributing to the acceleration in natural resource depletion, as each province seeks to reap more profit, especially in resource-extraction-dependent areas.

Landuse pattern around a Dayak longhouse from above. The Suharto government did not recognize communal land rights, so that indigenous lands were often awarded to large corporations as logging concessions.

Seasonally flooded forest in Danau Sentarum National Park.

Entikong-Tebedu is the only official gate between Indonesia and Malaysia in Borneo, but timber traffic is rampant all along the border. Sarawak's state-owned corporation, Hardwood Timber Company Shd Bdn, has at least three checkpoints in Samatan, Tebedu and Lubuk Antu, where illegal logs from West Kalimantan filter across the border and are issued legal documents for a fee.

West Kalimantan offers a perfect site of "timber laundering" to Sarawak, as transport access via land and sea is convenient. An estimated 70% of Sarawak's annual timber production originates in illegal operations across the border.

10% of the world's remaining tropical forests is found in Indonesia. Forests in this country are disappearing at a rate of 1.7 to 2 million hectares each year, due to logging, land conversion for plantation and agriculture, and fires.

The four Kalimantan provinces (Indonesian Borneo) contain 30% of all Indonesian forests.

"Illegal" logging accounts for 70-90% of Indonesia's timber production, but large companies, military and government are the main perpetrators and profiteers. This photo of an illegal logging site was taken near an old orangutan nest.

Many communities near the border still lead fairly traditional lives and are primarily subsistence farmers, with supplemental cash income from rubber, pepper and timber.

Forests can still be found - in the Bornean interior.

When the monetary crisis hit Indonesia in 1997, the currency value dropped more than five-fold. Many struggled as prices of basic goods skyrocketed, eventually leading to the overthrow of the New Order regime. Some farmers on the Mal-Indo border, however, profited from the devaluation of rupiah, as they sold pepper and other goods across the border in Malaysian ringgits.

In the lowland forest.

Rivers provide easy transportation routes for logs. Timber logged over the dry season flood the waterways when the rain starts to fall.

Inside the swamp forest.

This creative use of Malaysian snack wrappers in an Indonesian longhouse shows the proximity of the Malaysian and Indonesian economies in this area. Many investors from Kuching and Sibu in Sarawak take advantage of the rupiah-ringgit exchange rate to buy cheap logs from West Kalimantan.

State landuse planning map shows that most areas in the forest-rich provinces are allocated as production forests (except blue - national parks - and dark green - protected forests - areas). "Protected forest" actually means "reserved for future logging".

A World Bank report in 2001 warned that, given the current deforestation rate in Indonesia, forests in Sumatra would disappear by 2005 and in Kalimantan by 2010.