7 1 Fore st and Natur e Conservation Research and Development Center, Begor Rattan is one of the non-wood forest products, which had sufficient international market. Indonesia export value in 1992 was USD 208, 183. Around 80% of world rattan supply came from Indonesia. Ninety percent of its quantity were produced from natural forest in Sumatra, Kalimantan, and Sulawesi and around 10% were extracted from rattan plantation (Sutarno et al., 1994). According to Jacobs (1981) and World Conservation Monitoring Center (1992) the : most divers and center of rattan was in Malaysia with the biggest genus of Calamus, Daemonorops 'and Korthalsia. These plants belong to order of Arecaceae (Uhl and Dransfield, 1987), a climbing plant which grows by its flagellum or cirrus between coppices as a solitary plant or clumps (Rombe, 1986). More than 600 rattan species were distributed from Africa, India Peninsula, Sri Lanka, South China, Malay Peninsula, Indonesian Archipelago, Papua New Guinea, up to Australia and Fiji (lacobs, 1981; Dransfield et al., 1989, WCMC, 1992). In Indonesia, there were eight genera with more than 300 species (Kramadibrata, 1992) and 28 species of them have important economical value. Two genera with high economical value were Calamus, and Daemonorops (Uhl and Dransfield, 1987 in Dransfield et al., 1989). A rapid decrease of rattan habitat and the depletion of non-identified species were due to a serious forest destruction in the Gunung Halimun National Park (West Java). Gunung Halimun National Park was the youngest and the largest existing rain forest in Java, therefore it presented high bio-diversity. Among the biodiversity rattan is species which have economic potential (PHPA, 1992). Nevertheless, the amount of population and distribution of each rattan species in the area had been yet widely known. I. INTRODUCTION Keywords : rattan, species, Gunung Halimun Management of forest is believed that many basic knowledges about the nature of the forest is needed. One of them is to develop the forest as a resource of cane industry in a sustainable way. For this purpose, the composition, distribution and density of rattan species in Gunung Halimun National Park (INGH) were studied as a model. Data were collected from December 1994 until May 1995. For species composition on rattan in TNGH, three areas were observed namely in Mt. Kancana, Mt. Pameungpeuk and Mt. Pangkulahan using a continues belt transect method, from the elevation of 800-1,400 m above sea level. It was found that there were 13 species of rattans in the region. In terms of species richness and densities, Mt. Pameungpeuk comes first, followed by Mt. Pangkulahan and Mt. Kancana. Calam«: heteroides, C jave11m, Daemonorops melanochaetu, and Pleaocomia elongata are dominant both in seedling and nature forms. The nature rattans are relatively abundant in areas less than 1,000 meter above sea level and decrease in number of species as well as the minimal population in the higher altitude. Calam»s ornatus grows well at 800-1,400 mas!., while Daemonorops ruberat 800-1,500 mas!., D.oblonga at 800-1,400 mas!. ABSTRA CT Titi Kalima 1 RAITAN SPECIES AT THREE MOUNTS IN GUNUNG HALIMUN NATIONAL PARK, WEST JAVA