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FOREST CONSERVATION NEWS TODAY
Corporate Environmentalists Enable Commercial Rainforest Destruction
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Forest Networking a Project of Forests.org, Inc.
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August 25, 2002
OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by Forests.org
Many environmental conglomerates are capitulating to – indeed aiding
and abetting - predatory logging of the World’s remaining large and
natural wild forests. Take WWF – they generally do great
environmental work – mainstream, yet understanding the issues and the
stakes of failure. It is so disappointing to see them facilitating
the demise of the World’s last large and contiguous primary and old-
growth forests through their embrace of certified commercial
forestry. Even Greenpeace refuses to take a strong line against
industrial logging of the World’s remaining ancient rainforests –
assuring us that if done in a certifiably sustainable manner, it is
ok. The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) is even worse –
facilitating and then cleaning up after industrial logging in Africa.
Corporate financed environmental sell-outs can not be tolerated any
longer. So called environmental groups that are aiding and abetting
the destruction of ancient forests and their evolutionary heritage
must be boycotted and their forest conservation approach discredited.
WWF and the WCS in particular can not have it both ways – raking in
millions from logging companies while misinforming their members and
supporters regarding the effects of their forest conservation
programs. These groups are like fattened pigs feeding on the trough
of forest ecocide.
The following article from the New York Times informs us that true
conservationists are “learning to live with logging and (Gasp!) even
liking it”. Less than 20% of the World’s primary forests remain in
large blocks and a relatively intact condition. It is unthinkable
that the environmental conglomerates benefit financially by giving
highly intensive exploitation of these wildlands a “green” mark of
approval. It should be noted that the article is filled with
inaccuracies, as the reporter was shepherded around by industrial
loggers and their environmental lackeys.
There is no agreement by scientists that sustainable forest
management is more than rhetoric – particularly in primary forests.
Are we sustaining timber yields or ecological patterns and processes?
No one knows what Sustainable Forest Management means – it is all
things to everybody while actually meaning nothing. In general,
selective logging in the tropics means selecting most, if not all,
merchantable trees and logging them. Ecosystems that are millions of
years old and represent untold evolutionary knowledge are being
ripped apart to make toilet seats and other consumer crap for the
overdeveloped North. It is not that no logging should occur – it is
that industrial forestry is the wrong scale, type of ownership and
management practices – and is inherently unsustainable. On the other
hand, small and medium scaled eco-forestry activities carried out by
local peoples for their own betterment in one part of an otherwise
protected landscape could be ecologically and socially sustainable;
and indeed, beneficial in terms of real forest conservation and
community development.
The grassroots forest conservation movement of the people must not
tolerate WWF and WCS’s efforts to greenwash and launder ill-gotten
logging profits. This is a shot across the bow – working to reform
irredeemable industrial logging while on their payroll is not forest
conservation. Unless these groups get their heads out of their
posterior ends and start saving rather than logging forests, they
will lose support. Let it be known that if you are a WWF or WCS
member, you money is aiding and abetting the final industrial
liquidation of the World’s ancient rainforests, and their conversion
into degraded tree farms. I strongly encourage you to consider
canceling your membership and finding ways to support a forest
conservation vision comprised of rainforest protection and community
eco-forestry. The era of predatory, large-scale commercial logging
of primary and old-growth forests is over, as is the legitimacy of
their corporate environmental apologists.
g.b.
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RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:
Title: Learning to Live With Logging and (Gasp!) Even Liking It
Source: Copyright 2002 New York Times
Date: August 20, 2002
Byline: MARC LACEY
POKOLA, Congo Republic - "Bongo!" Paul Elkan exclaimed as he cruised
down a logging road in this dense central African forest, keeping one
eye out for animal tracks and the other on oncoming traffic.
A researcher with the Wildlife Conservation Society, Mr. Elkan can
spot the tracks of the bongo, or striped antelope, while driving at
top speed in his Land Cruiser.
He knows many other soil signatures as well: the giant pads of the
forest elephant, the cleft hooves of the duiker, the handprints of
the chimpanzee, not to mention the tread marks left by logging trucks
loaded down with hardwood rushing to the sawmill.
Irresponsible logging replaces rich ecosystems with barren fields.
But scientists acknowledge that selective logging can actually help a
forest grow and provide room for some animal species, like elephants
and bongo, to forage, socializeand reproduce.
This new view that resources can often be managed both for economic
and environmental value is uncomfortable for some conservationists.
But it is spreading. In fact, some environmentalists say it is the
best and perhaps the only approach to conserving nature in rapidly
developing countries.
As a result, biologists working in threatened ecosystems around the
world are increasingly trying counterintuitive strategies, promoting
nonpolluting forms of shrimp farming instead of condemning it all as
a disaster, finding ways to shape farms to reserve habitat and
working with loggers instead of against them.
"It wouldn't be the best thing for Africa's forests to put a fence
around them and keep everyone out," said Wale Adeleke, a forestry
expert in Cameroon for the World Wildlife Fund. "Resources are
supposed to be used. If you want to boost the growth of the forest
you need to take out some older trees. But you have to log it in a
way in which it is still around for future generations."
As for the bongo, Mr. Elkan finds plenty of tracks amid the turmoil
of the logging operation here. "They like disturbances," Mr. Elkan
said. "If you're going to study bongo you have to do it in perturbed
forests."
There are certainly more and more of those. The last untouched
forests of central Africa are being divided among logging companies.
But instead of categorically condemning logging as destructive to the
environment, conservation biologists are beginning to acknowledge
that logging is a part of the future of the forest.
When Mr. Elkan is not tracking bongo, he is inside the offices of the
Congolaise Industrielle des Bois, the main logging company here,
gently nudging the executives to think about the wildlife in and
around the trees the company fells.
Logging seems neat and clean on the maps and charts displayed in
offices of C.I.B., as the German company is known. The 3.5 million
acres of wilderness handed over to C.I.B. by the Congo Republic are
divided into segments; roads are mere lines on the map; trees are
specks.
But, up close, it is uglier. Bulldozers plow through the greenery to
create corridors for extraction. Although only large, mature trees
may be felled under the agreement the company has with the government
in Brazzaville, collateral damage occurs.
Yet it is not the removal of the towering mahogany trees that causes
the most distress to animals, scientists say. Logging brings with it
unintended consequences that do not give many animals a chance.
The same roads that C.I.B. uses to pull its logs from the far reaches
of the forest are used by hunters to go after the animals seeking
refuge there. As the logging company grows - it is already the
country's largest private employer with 1,500 workers - what used to
be tiny villages in the remote forests are turning into boom towns.
Pokola had 7,200 residents three years ago, a huge population
compared with other settlements. And more people keep coming. Pokola
has some 11,400 residents today, a number that could pass 18,000 in
2005, according to projections. All those people need to eat, and
bush meat is the prime source of protein in the region.
A stroll through the main market in this company town can be a
stomach-churning experience. One stand sells whole smoked monkeys.
There are antelope steaks, with the head and the hoofs displayed
prominently for identification. Live crocodiles lie with their feet
tied behind their backs. Cooked caterpillars go for a few cents each.
All the bush meat is covered with flies.
Studies estimate that a million tons of wild meat is extracted from
Congo Basin forests every year, and Mr. Elkan and his wife, Sarah,
have been trying to find alternatives to this vast drain on wildlife.
Tilapia are now in the markets, raised in fish farms near the logging
headquarters. So is beef, from cows that are carried on company
barges from the Central African Republic. The panoply of programs to
try to control the consumption of bush meat is referred to as
alternative protein.
Not every experiment works. Raising porcupines, a delicacy here,
proved a disaster. Many died and those that didn't escaped into the
woods. Rabbits, too, have not thrived.
As it is now, less than 5 percent of the protein intake in the region
comes from the alternative protein sources.
On another front, Mr. Elkan has worked with the government, the
company and the residents to set up an intricate regulatory system
for the hunting of bush meat, which is the meat from any animal found
in the wild, whether it is protected or not.
Residents now have hunting permits and special zones. "Eco-guards,"
under Mr. Elkan's supervision, stop logging trucks at intersections
to search for illegal carcasses and troll the forest for metal bands
used to trap large numbers of wildlife at once.
Illegal bush meat is more difficult to find in the markets than it
was a few years ago. There was a time when elephant steaks were
readily available in Pokola, alongside chucks of chimpanzee and
bongo, all protected species under Congo Republic law. Critics say
the problem remains severe, although it is now well hidden in the
forests.
The Wildlife Conservation Society began working closely with C.I.B.
in 1999 after the company won rights to the area adjacent to
Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park, which the conservation society runs for
the government. The company was seeking to deflect criticism from
environmentalists, mostly those in Europe.
Even with the cooperative agreement, differences remain. For
instance, the company recently put a road about three miles from the
park, prompting protests from Mr. Elkan. Still, the bulldozers went
ahead.
"He gets excited when he sees nice animals, and I'm excited when I
see a nice log," acknowledged Jean-Marie Mévellec, C.I.B.'s longtime
director. "We have different jobs, although it's good that he's
around to defend the animals."
Still, many environmentalists prefer a more confrontational approach.
"We are calling on the government of Congo to commit to formal
independent monitoring of logging company activities," said Filip
Verbelen, a forest campaigner at Greenpeace.
Last summer, in a move that company officials had hoped would quell
the critics, C.I.B. agreed not to log about 100 square miles of land
in its concession, an area known as the Goualogo Triangle. Biologists
had lobbied C.I.B. to save the forest because it has some of the
highest densities of gorillas, chimpanzees and forest elephants.
Still, for every stretch of protected area there are many even larger
swaths of forest set aside for logging. Preserving the Congo
Republic's forests is but one of many challenges facing the
government here, which is also grappling with political instability,
corruption and poverty. Logging is the country's second-largest
source of foreign currency, behind offshore oil drilling.
"We have to move away from protection, where we close off the
forests," said Bai-Mass M. Taal, a forestry expert at the United
Nations Environment Program in Nairobi. "We can use these forests in
a way that strikes a balance."
Still, scientists say much remains unknown about the species that may
be snuffed out when centuries-old trees crash on the forest floor.
"Logging may favor some of the big cuddly species but that may be at
the cost of some of the others," said Simon Counsell of the London-
based Rainforest Foundation, who has criticized the partnership
between C.I.B. and the Wildlife Conservation Society for focusing on
a few large mammals.
As for Mr. Elkan, he said he had more appreciation for the profit-
loss pressures of being a logger.
"We had a confrontational relationship in the beginning," he said.
"There were C.I.B. managers who said, `Wildlife is not our problem;
we're here to cut trees.' Over the years, trust developed. They know
I'm not trying to shut them down."
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