Last stand at Leuser
A unique Indonesian ecosystem lies in the path of the palm oil industry, which must ceaselessly expand to sate the bottomless appetite of the global consumer goods sector
Singkil, in South Aceh, is where the swamp meets the sea. The road from Subulussalam snakes through it, following the course of the Alas River to its mouth, then veering left along the coast. On the southern side, the Indian Ocean breaks against Sumatra’s shore, the spray from the wave tops just visible through the trees; on the other, a dark-red mud track runs into the peatland forest. It is early November, and the near-daily rainstorms have soaked the earth, making it a brutal struggle through the thigh-deep peat to reach solid ground. At the end of the track, a tunnel has been smashed through the trees, leaving broken trunks and turned-over soil.
“That’s just happened today,” says Ahmadi, a chain-smoking, whip-thin activist who seems able to skate over the top of the peat, pausing only to light up. A local informant has tipped off the Acehnese environmental organisation that Ahmadi belongs to, and he has come to investigate. It is barely noon.
