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WORLDWIDE
FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS
Ivory
Coast Acts to Curb Illegal Timber Felling
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Forest
Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises
8/30/96
OVERVIEW
& SOURCE by EE
This
item details efforts by the government of the Ivory Coast to protect
its
diminishing rainforests. They have
announced measures to crack down on
illegal
logging, insure plantation forestry commitments are honored, and to
ban
virtually all logging in sensitive savannah zones. This item is a
photocopy
of a Reuters article.
g.b.
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RELAYED
TEXT STARTS HERE:
Ivory
Coast acts to curb illegal timber felling
8/30/96
Copyright
1996 by Reuters
ABIDJAN,
Aug 30 (Reuter) - Ivory Coast, keen to protect its shrinking
rainforest,
has banned all felling of timber on the fringe of its savannah
zone
and told all who trade in illegally felled trees that they face
prosecution,
industry sources say.
The
government directive, passed on to members of the industry on Tuesday,
toughened
up earlier guidelines allowing a limited number of operators to
fell
trees north of the eighth parallel and envisaging legal proceedings
against
people who felled trees illegally but not those who traded in them.
The new
directive also gave plantation operators who have not begun
replanting
schemes until October 15 to comply or face a ban on felling but
it
offered a fresh look at rules governing felling of teak, banned in all
but
very rare cases.
"Those
who trade in banned timber as well as the fraudsters (who cut it)
will be
brought to justice," Youth and Culture Minister Vlami Bi Dou told
representatives
from the industry, according to the sources.
"All
timber felling in the forest in the savannah is henceforth banned and
anyone
breaching this directive lays himself open to legal proceeding," he
said.
Bi Dou
was standing in for Agriculture Minister Lambert Kouassi Konan at
the
meeting called on the orders of President Henri Konan Bedie.
The
meeting followed a newspaper article by an opposition member of
parliament
alleging widespread abuse of the rules governing timber felling
north
of the eighth parallel.
Bi Dou
told industry representatives that the president was waiting for
concrete
proposals from all timber operators, including forestry plantation
owners,
those who run the timber industry and the state forestry
administration.
The
sources said the meeting agreed on a list of 10 points for submission
to
Bedie. They included the new ban, tighter registration of forestry
companies,
increased checks by the state forestry agency SODEFOR and
increased
replanting.
Felling
of teak, one of a range of tropical hardwoods in Ivory Coast's
dwindling
forest, is banned except in a limited number of cases with
express
permission from SODEFOR, the Forest Plantation Development Company.
A
proposal agreed at the meeting said a document covering teak felling
would
be drafted to include new guidelines.
Three
decades of intensive logging and slash-and-burn peasant farming have
devastated
Ivory Coast's ancient rain forest.
The
world's top cocoa producer, which once boasted its own large slice of
West
and Central Africa's rich tropical rain forest, has seen the level of
tree
cover in the forest zone drop from 75 percent to 25 percent.
Kouassi
Konan said in July that the national forestation level was down to
16
percent, "which is under the critical 20 percent indispensable for
maintaining
ecological balance."
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