Reply #9: More on massive illegal rainforest felling in Indonesia - Feb 22 report [View All]

[Nothing Without Hope]

this is the area that originally spurred the European efforts to protect these forests, which are disappearing rapidly here and everywhere else they remain. The great majority of the logging is illegal and run by criminal gangs.

http://forests.org/articles/reader.asp?linkid=39384

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Indonesia: Third Largest Rainforest Illegally Felled for Flooring

Source: Copyright 2005, Environment News Service
Date: February 22, 2005

JAKARTA, Indonesia, February 21, 2005 (ENS) - Corrupt Indonesian military officers and international criminal syndicates are looting the forests of Papua, New Guinea, turning the world's third largest rainforest into a multi-billion dollar stream of illicit timber between Indonesia and China, new undercover research has found.

A report published Friday by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) of Washington and London, and the Indonesian group Telapak, details undercover meetings with illegal loggers, traders and timber buyers that reveal exactly how the forests of New Guinea are being stolen and who is profiting by the theft.

(snip)

With about 70 percent of its forest cover still intact, New Guinea still contains the last large stretches of undisturbed forest in the Asia-Pacific region, where 95 percent of the frontier forests have already been cut. But the Papua forest is rapidly disappearing, the trade driven by demand for a dark, luxurious looking wood called merbau.

M. Yayat Afianto of Telapak said, "Papua has become the main illegal logging hotspot in Indonesia. The communities of Papua are paid a pittance for trees taken from their land, while timber dealers in Jakarta, Singapore and Hong Kong are banking huge profits."

(snip)

(more at link)