Borneo's majestic rainforest is being killed by the timber mafia | World news | The Observer

Borneo's majestic rainforest is being killed by the timber mafia | World news | The Observer

Felling trees to meet British demand for garden furniture is devastating villages, livelihoods and food supplies, and threatening endangered species

The cows are afloat, with squawking chickens sharing their sturdy bamboo rafts. Children splash and swim in and around their homes, keeping away from the deeper channel of peat-coloured water that powers through the village of Meliau. Adults tightrope-walk across makeshift paths of hardwood thrown over huge floating logs. Others paddle around in long wooden boats. Everything that floats is lashed to everything that doesn't.

The monsoon rains are not due for a month or so, but the "dry" season for people in West Kalimantan province in Indonesian Borneo has been marked by three months of unrelenting floods. The sky is clear and blue and the stilted long houses and huts are reflected in mirror image on the water: it is a strangely scenic backdrop to one of the largest unfolding disasters on the planet – the stripping of the Borneo rainforest.