Indonesia's volcano eruption triggers forest damage of $611 mln

JAKARTA. November 29. KAZINFORM Loss value of forest damage due to recent volcano eruption of Mount Merapi in Indonesia's Yogyakarta and Central Java province reached 5.5 trillion rupiah (about 611 million U.S. dollars), consisted of ruined 1.12 million of trees in 2,800 hectares of forest areas, Kompas daily quoted an official as saying on Monday, Kazinform refers to Xinhua.

"It looks like the forest areas were just bombed," said Chief of Mount Merapi National Park Tri Prasetyo in Magelang regency of Central Java province on Sunday.

The national park has total forest width of 6,410 hectares spread in Magelang, Sleman, Boyolali and Klaten regencies where the worst damage was occurred in Sleman with total loss of 3.5 trillion rupiah (388.8 million dollars).

The loss was merely calculated from the value of each dead and damaged tree, which was 2 million rupiah (222.2 dollar).

However, if the damage on ecosystem as conservation land, water and oxygen supplier and habitat for flora and fauna was calculated, the loss was priceless.

"It needs hundreds of year to recover the forest areas as before," he said, Kazinform cites Xinhua. See www.xinhuanet.com