BANJARMASIN, Indonesia — A growing coalition of Indigenous communities, students and civil society organizations from Borneo is rallying against fast-moving plans to establish a new national park in the remote Meratus mountain range. “The Meratus forest is our mother,” said Anang Suriani, a spokesperson for the Dayak Indigenous community from Kambiayin, a village in South Kalimantan province that falls within the borders of the proposed Meratus Mountains National Park. “It’s a place where we live, farm, forage, practice tradition and obtain medicine,” he added. “Making it a national park is tantamount to destroying us.” The government plans to zone Meratus Mountains National Park over 119,779 hectares (295,980 acres), an area twice the size of the city of Chicago, or more than 50% larger than the country of Singapore. Since Indonesia’s independence in 1945, successive governments have established 57 national parks across the country, the largest of which is Lorentz National Park in Papua, at around 2.5 million hectares (6.2 million acres), an area 30 times larger than Singapore. The smallest, Kelimutu National Park on Flores island, is slightly smaller than the city state. South Kalimantan is one of only four of the 38 provinces across Indonesia that doesn’t have a national park. However, in April this year, UNESCO, the United Nations’ cultural office, designated the Meratus Mountains as a Global Geopark for its “fascinating geological record of complex tectonic evolution beginning in the Jurassic period, 201 to 145 million years ago.” Officials in Indonesia unveiled the national park draft in…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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