What Has Happened To The Rainforest In Borneo During The Last 20 Years?

Borneo is a fantastic and beautiful tropical island – the third biggest island in the world and it should be a perfect tropical paradise, teeming with life. Twenty years ago, three quarters of its land surface was covered with tropical rainforest but since the late 1980s it has suffered from the impact of the logging industry.

This has cut down large tranches of the forest to provide wood for garden furniture, pulp for paper production and, unbelievably, to meet the world demand for wooden chopsticks.

Much of the rainforest has been burned or cut down and only half what was there twenty years ago is now left. Gone with it are the animals and plants and insects that used to live there, changing the look of the island significantly. It is still a tropical paradise, but if the logging industry continues to cut down the forest, its landscape in the future could become barren wasteland.