Michael Bachelard, Indonesia correspondent for Fairfax Media

Near the village of Kayee Lon in Aceh, the peatland was recently cleared by burning, and is being drained via canals, to prepare it to be planted with oil palms. Photo: Michael Bachelard

Indonesia has accused environmental groups of protesting against the removal of trees that don't exist.

The country's top forestry official says an international petition to save Aceh's forest that has gained international attention and well over a million signatures is based on flawed assessments.

Environment groups claim that the Aceh government is planning to convert 1.2 million hectares of existing tropical forest into oil palm, logging concessions, mines and roads, with devastating effects.

Environment groups say this vast area in the Tripa peat forest in Aceh has been burnt to make way for oil palm plantations. Photo: COALITION TO SAVE THE TRIPA PEAT

But Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, the head of Indonesia's forestry monitoring body, says the province's proposed plan would conserve about 1.8 million hectares of Aceh's forest, only slightly less than an earlier plan from 2000.

He claimed conservationists had chosen instead to compare the new plan to a much more pro-green proposal by the former provincial government from 2010, which was never implemented, and which would have meant Aceh had about 3 million hectares of forest under protection.

That equates to 68 per cent of the land mass, compared with the 45 per cent in the government's current plan.

A young miner treads the forest path towards an illegal gold mining camp in the hills near the village of Geumpang in Aceh. forestpath.jpg

Some of these areas had previously been unprotected, and some were to have been reforested under that plan.

A local moratorium on new logging concessions had also helped protect Aceh's forests, some of the last large-scale forested areas in Indonesia.

But the new government, elected in April last year, has ditched the moratorium and the former governor's plan, and formulated its own, which protects 1.2 million hectares less than the 2010 proposal, but only about 100,000 hectares less than the 2000 spatial plan, which was the last plan passed into law.

The Indonesian central government ministry has said that plan is likely to pass. Mr Kuntoro said the 2010 plan "cannot be used for comparison," because it was never implemented.

But the Aceh-based environmental activist who began the petition, Rudi Putra, said the new plan would still see significant areas of forest cut down as old logging concessions are reactivated.

He said illegal permits to open forests were already being issued before the spatial plan is even agreed. New road construction and poaching was also affecting wildlife in the area, which contains some of Indonesia's last wide tracts of lowland tropical forest.

"The key aspect of the new Aceh government's spatial plan is how much of these very sensitive areas are to be threatened with expansion of logging, road building, plantations and mining, even if they are officially classified as forests," Mr Rudi said.

"I think over 1 million people signed this petition because they share the concerns of Aceh's people, and because they care about the fate of tigers, elephants, orangutans and rhinos, the incredible biodiversity of Aceh's forests, and global climate change."