JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Researchers say the Indonesian government's "land swap" plan to give plantation companies new lands in exchange for restoring areas they destroyed could result in more tropical forests being cut down.

Spatial analysis by civil society groups shows 40 percent of the 921,000 hectares (3,556 square miles) designated for land swaps is natural forest. Indonesia is second only to Brazil in the amount of such forest cut down in the past decade.

The forestry ministry plan is part of Indonesia's attempts to avoid a repeat of disastrous 2015 fires that ravaged vast acreages of swampland that were cleared and drained by pulp and paper companies for industrial plantations.

In exchange for "re-wetting" the so-called peatlands, making them unsuitable for plantations, conglomerates such as Sinarmas and April would be given lands elsewhere.