The US timber industry has teamed up with two environmental groups to send wood to Indonesia to help rebuild homes and schools destroyed in the tsunami.
Conservation International, WWF and the American Forest & Paper Association are collecting donated wood from the US timber industry and are appealing to US corporations and government agencies to pay for shipping lumber to Indonesia.
In a statement, the partnership said: “Without imported timber, pressure will increase to illegally log the remaining tropical forests, threatening their existence.”
A pilot shipment of 50 containers of timber, enough to build 800-1,200 single-family wood and brick homes, will be sent to Aceh.
Aceh’s acting governor Azwar Abubakar said that more than one million m3 of wood is needed to rebuild homes and schools in the province.
WWF spokesperson Michael Ross said the Indonesian government had sought environmentally sustainable ways of rebuilding Aceh after observing that tsunami damage was worst in deforested parts of the province.
He added: “If we can’t supply at least some of that timber with renewable wood from abroad, we are going to lose the forests of Sumatra.”