WASHINGTON, DC.- Indonesia has some of the richest biological diversity of any nation on Earth; however, it is threatened with losing it to forest destruction. In reaction, more than 900 scientists from around the world, including those from the Smithsonian Institution, recently came together as members of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation to release “The Bali Declaration,” which calls for urgent efforts to slow rampant deforestation in Indonesia. Geographically, Indonesia is distributed across an archipelago of more than 17,000 islands that span Asian and Australasian regions. A great many of its species are endemic to just one or two islands, and biologists are still discovering new species throughout the country—underscoring how fragile and little understood Indonesia’s biodiversity is. However, logging, land conversion, forest fires, overharvesting and other environmental stresses are posing greater and greater threats. The pace of def