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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

Asian Logging Companies Move Into Heart of Amazon Rainforest

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Forest Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises

http://forests.org/ -- Forest Conservation Archives

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3/10/97

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PRESS RELEASE

ECOLOGICAL ENTERPRISES IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Glen Barry March 10, 1997

Madison, WI, USA

(608) 233-2194

ASIAN LOGGING COMPANIES MOVE INTO HEART OF AMAZON RAINFOREST

The current onslaught of the Asian industrial logging juggernaut is

sure to bring widespread rainforest destruction and displacement of

indigenous peoples to the world's largest remaining rainforest

wilderness: the Amazon.

After exhausting much of the rainforests of Malaysia, and working on

the rainforests of Papua New Guinea, Asian timber companies are

bringing their legacy of rapacious exploitation to the rainforests of

Brazil by buying controlling interests in area logging companies and

purchasing rights to cut down vast rainforest territories for as

little as three U.S. dollars an acre. Fifteen percent of the Amazon

is now threatened with immediate logging as these companies quadrupled

their South American interests in the last few months of 1996.

According to the Wall Street Journal, up to 30 million acres are at

stake. Major players include the Malaysian companies WTK Group,

Samling, Rimbunan Hijau and Mingo; Fortune Timber of Taiwan, and

several companies from China, the Associated Press reports.

These timber companies devastated the forests of Sarawak, Malaysia

within a decade, leaving social dislocation and a landscape marred

with silted rivers and eroded soil in their wake. Papua New Guinea is

suffering similar consequences with allegations of graft and

environmental mismanagement. Even before the arrival of these Asian

companies, annual deforestation rates in the Brazilian Amazon

increased from about 2.8 million acres in 1991 to nearly 3.8 million

acres in 1994.

A recent survey by Brazil's federal environmental agency (IBAMA)

revealed that not one of the 34 logging sites it visited in the state

of Para met minimum international harvesting standards. Financial,

technical, and political problems make Brazil particularly vulnerable

to logging abuses. Although sound forest laws and harvest practices

may exist in theory, they are frequently flaunted by illegal loggers

as Brazil's 80 environmental inspectors must monitor an area the size

of western Europe.

While the Amazon's sheer size, poor soils, and tropical diseases

traditionally reduced access to the forest, major new highways dissect

the basin, providing a major artery for timber companies to access the

north-central Amazon. These roads will also increase forest access to

hunters and slash and burn farmers.

Brazil's government has launched an investigation into the Asian

timber purchases. According to IBAMA's chief, Eduardo Martins,

"Multi-million dollar investments in the Amazonian logging industry

would spell disaster...We don't want that kind of investment."

However, even in the unlikely event that the loggers do follow

forestry laws, the excessive scale of their operations could easily

accelerate the pace of deforestation of the ancient Amazon rainforest,

along with its vast array of plant and animal life.

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