Apr 14, 2005. /Lesprom Network/. Indonesia illegal logging was now costing the country over three billion dollars per year. The figures were revealed as the Jakarta-based Conservation International Indonesia warned that timber barons were now targetting remote Papua province as previous forests on Java and Sumatra islands had been exhausted. "The estimation of annual state losses is about 30 trillion rupiah ($3.16 billion), based on reports of illegal logging practices across Indonesia," said Kus Saparyadi, the forestry ministry official in charge of protecting forests. He said the figure did not include the cost of environmental damage caused by illegal tree felling. Agustinus Wijayanto, an investigator for Conservation International Indonesia in Papua, told AFP illegal loggers were now targetting the area in the extreme east of Indonesia. "Illegal logging in Papua is not yet very severe but it must not be allowed to evolve into the second Java or Sumatra," he said. "In reality, we fear that deforestation in Papua could be worse than that in Papua since Papua contributes more than 50% of Indonesia's biodiversity," Wijayanto said. Environmental investigators say that timber smuggling from Papua to China is the world's largest logging racket. The London-based Environmental Investigation Agency EIA said 300,000 cubic meters (more than 10 million cubic feet) of merbau hardwood is being smuggled out of Papua every month to feed China's timber processing industry. The agency said illegal logging in Papua involved Indonesian military and civilian officials, Malaysian logging gangs and multinational companies as well as brokers in Singapore and dealers in Hong Kong. The military has already declared one of its officers in Papua a suspect in an illegal logging case. He is under detention awaiting trial. Indonesia is losing forest areas equivalent to half the size of Switzerland every year, according to the EIA. Rapid deforestation has had devastating environmental consequences for both Indonesia and the Southeast Asian region, causing floods and landslides and shrouding nearby countries with haze from illegal fires set to clear land.