Sir

Conservation International (CI) is an organization that “protects the Earth's biologically richest areas and helps the people who live there improve their quality of life”1. Globally, we focus on those areas richest in irreplaceable biodiversity: hotspots2 and tropical wilderness areas3.

A recent survey4 of 31 expatriate and 74 Indonesian environmental professionals found that most of them were more concerned with sustainable development and land-use planning than with species and wilderness protection.

The conclusion was that “conserving species and tropical wilderness areas will require that policy-makers in targeted regions give CI's ecological goals higher priority than is currently the case in Indonesia”4.

We fully agree with the paper's findings and conclusions. However, we should point out that it is important not to confuse geographic global conservation priorities with strategies for conservation implementation within these priorities. The broad-scale focus of CI, and of the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund with the World Bank and Global Environment Facility5, on hotspots and tropical wildernesses, concerns the former. In contrast, the Indonesia survey4 concerns the latter.

Our primary focus at this fine scale is on strengthening direct protection of biodiversity. The greatest current concern is that Indonesian internal conflicts and economic crisis might deteriorate so far that biodiversity conservation becomes a low priority. However, the current political crisis and forest management decentralization process has created an atmosphere in which significant shifts in conservation strategy are being seriously considered. Innovative ideas are welcome, such as the payment of local opportunity costs6 via the 'conservation concessions' concept7. Nevertheless, we would argue that there is no single strategy for conservation implementation — rather, the appropriate actions must be determined by local knowledge of the situation.

The current CI–Indonesia programme, for example, is involved in activities that support sustainable development programmes and help integrated land-use and biodiversity planning in Irian Jaya, the easternmost province in Indonesia. In central Sulawesi, we are creating economic alternatives to deforestation and other habitat loss by developing ecologically sustainable enterprises such as ecotourism in the Togean proposed marine park, and we are supporting Non-Timber Forest Product development in Sumatra.

To sum up, now is the time for conservation organizations such as CI to secure environmental stewardship and biodiversity conservation goals in partnership with the Indonesian government, NGOs, the university community, business and civil society. The fate of one of the planet's richest 'megadiversity'8 countries is at stake.