The potential road construction is an important issue, but your correction about the closure of Gunung Kerinci "being closed" is incorrect. I climbed it with a permit from the national park last month - the summit has been closed occasionally for short periods over the last several years because of increased activity. However, it has most certainly not been closed as you report. It is open for business and hikers represent an important livelihood for local homestays and guides.

Gee, another road through another national park in another country... Let's see, in the past year alone, that would make (just off the top of my head) Indonesia, Tanzania, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, and Brazil. Why don't they just get their attacks against Mother Nautre over with, and pave the whole damn planet? If we want to get up close and personal with our fellow Earthlings, we can just run over them with our gas-sucking cars whenver and wherever we want to. At least the "ice roads" through Arctic wilderness areas are starting to melt, thanks to global warming caused by the very vehicles that run up and down them. There's some kind of delicious irony in there somewhere, if you dig deeply enough.

In the name of the Sumatran tigers, rhinos, ground cuckoos, elephants, Malaysian tapirs, Sunda clouded leopards, and all the other critically endangered species of Sumatra, enough already, Indonesian government! So much damage has already been done to probably the most amazing place on Earth (your country). Let's leave what's left of it (a few National Parks where the last few of your amazing species still roam), as is, shall we?