More than half of the biodiversity across the archipelago remains unrecorded due to lack of knowledge coupled with poor awareness by local authorities to halt unprecedented destruction of biodiversity. As of 2010, only 20 of the more than 400 regencies have begun to catalog the species in their area. "Indonesia is one of the 17 largest biodiversity hotspots on the planet, but we have not recorded most of it," the deputy assistant of biodiversity conservation at the State Environment Ministry, Utami Andayani, told The Jakarta Post. She said Indonesia was still vulnerable to biodiversity loss, brought about mainly by human population growth, deforestation, illegal trade in plants and animals and human-induced climate change. "It is difficult for us to complain if other countries exploit our biodiversity for commercial purposes such as medicine because of the lack of dat...