EU agriculture ministers, meeting in Brussels, rejected an outright ban as favoured by Britain, Spain and the Netherlands and agreed instead on measures including stricter rules on the certification of timber entering the EU.

However, Britain refused to vote for the watered-down measures, arguing they were not enough to stop illegal logging, blamed for 20 percent of carbon dioxide emissions.

"We shouldn't just be restricting illegal timber entering our market; we should be prohibiting it," said British Environment Under-Secretary Huw Irranca-Davies.

Britain argued that the measures approved ran counter to efforts being made by at the U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen to reach an agreement to fight climate change. ID:nLL527527]

The draft legislation approved on Tuesday will be sent to the European parliament for a second reading next year.

The Greenpeace environmental group said the proposal was a weak political agreement pandering to the interests of the timber lobby.

"While negotiations to limit the global climate impact of deforestation are under way in Copenhagen, European governments blocked proposals to improve draft legislation to prevent illegal wood and wood products from being placed on the EU market," Greenpeace, said in a statement.

Environmental groups say Europe buys 1.2 billion euros' ($1.75 billion) worth of illegally felled timber a year, about 20 percent of its imports. (Reporting by Bate Felix; editing by Andrew Dobbie)

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By Bate Felix, © (reuters) 15/12/2009
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Once in China, they will be processed and used for construction or turned into garden furniture and other products to be sold in European and US shops.

More than a third of all Russian logs are smuggled by mafias, a practice that doubled between 2005 and 2007, according to official figures.

It is a huge business. China imports nearly six out of 10 logs produced in the world, after banning logging in its own territory following devastating floods a decade ago.

In total, 10m cubic metres of wood, equivalent to nearly a third of all logging in the Amazon, is harvested every year from Russian soil.

This fuels a massive illegal business that threatens to destroy the largest forest on the planet in 20 to 30 years, according to Forest Trends, an international consortium of industry and conservation groups.

My boss has a guy who shuts up anyone creating problems or speaking too much "Yevgeni", illegal logger

Small logging brigades of some four men, with the help of trucks, are behind most illegal felling.

The head of one of these brigades, a burly young former policeman calling himself Yevgeni, agreed to tell me how the system operated from the inside, on condition his identity was not revealed.

"Quick, jump in the car! I'll be shot if I'm seen with a journalist," he orders as I arrive in a forest clearing.

"My boss has a guy who shuts up anyone creating problems or speaking too much," he explains later.

Corruption

Illegal loggers usually carry guns, says Yevgeni, have sophisticated saws that cannot be heard beyond a dozen metres and place watchmen with satellite phones to warn of intruders. Logging in Siberia Environmental activists say valuable tree species are being taken (Picture by Roman Fadeev, BROC)

Once they deliver the logs to the sawmills, according to Yevgeni, the mafia "legalises" them by bribing officials.

"Most are corrupt - inspectors, policemen, they all protect each other," he says.

Nowhere are the effects of their activities more evident than in the remote mountain villages in the heart of Primorsky region, the last refuge of Siberian tigers.

Anatoly Lebedev, an ex-KGB agent who is now a prominent environmental activist, accompanies me to one of these places.

"In northern Siberia loggers leave a trail of destruction," he says.

"Here, the forests seem fine, but they're actually dead. They're taking the most valuable species like Korean pine, oak and linden, which are key to maintaining the ecosystem. It's a disgrace," he says.

On the way to the village, he jumps up and shouts: "Look! There goes one."

Mr Lebedev points to a truck laden with logs emerging from a small path in the forest.

Dry rivers

Hours later we arrive in the tiny village of Limolniki, a collection of wooden tin-roofed houses.

Nicolai Lizun, a 76-year-old retired civil servant wearing military fatigues, explains that during the Soviet period, the state logging company prevented any illegal activities.

"Now it's all out of control. Illegal loggers working for outside companies come here, destroy everything and leave. It's barbaric." Russian forestry inspectors Anatoly Kabaniets (left) and Alexander Samoilenko have both suffered for their work as forestry inspectors

Next to him, Vitali Tereshchuk, 21, says: "We used to collect strawberries, mushrooms and ginseng. We went hunting, but now the hills are logged, the rivers are dry and soon there will be nothing left."

The powerful Russian mafia barons behind this booming illegal business lavish their money on flashy mansions in the region's capital, Dalnerechensk.

But Alexander von Bismarck, from the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), a non-governmental organisation or NGO, says the main beneficiaries are Chinese mafiosi and businessmen.

"There's pressure on forests in north-western Russia, touching Scandinavia, but the main problem is in far-eastern Siberia where the mafia is particularly violent," Mr Bismarck told me.

"We went to a dozen Chinese wood-processing companies across the border and most told us that they export all over Europe."

Russian forest inspectors I spoke to said there was little they could do against such well-funded and organised gangs.

Their situation is made worse by the firing of thousands of their colleagues when the then president, now prime minister, Vladimir Putin scrapped the Forest Service in 2001.

Deadly risk

Alexander Vitrik, a local senior inspector, says that in the few cases where someone is arrested, pressure to stop trials is huge from the top levels of government. Map

"I can't give names, but they're protected by very influential people," he says.

Mr Vitrik admits that corruption among inspectors is rife, but declines to go into detail.

Despite these problems, some inspectors vow to keep on fighting.

Alexander Samoilenko, 57, whom I find in an off-road vehicle donated by a Western NGO, is dressed in military fatigues and armed with a rifle and camera to record evidence against any offender.

"Since March, I've only been given 600 litres of gas to patrol seven million hectares," he says.

Mr Samoilenko says those behind the illegal logging set fire to his car and then tried to burn down his parents' house, but failed.

His colleague Anatoly Kabaniets, sitting in the driver's seat, smiles when hearing this: "All this small stuff doesn't perturb us. My son worked as an inspector and was murdered, but we'll never give up."

By Alfonso Daniels, © (BBC News, Dalnerechensk, Russia) 12/10/2009
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Environmental campaigners claim that an executive decree issued last month legalising the export of raw hardwood, including rosewood and ebony, has given free rein to criminal gangs who fell endangered trees to sell on the international market.

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and Conservation International (CI) have signed a statement calling for the authorisation to be revoked in order to halt the “destruction of Madagascar’s natural resources and biodiversity”.

According to the WWF, criminal syndicates have felled 7,000 cubic metres of rosewood a month since the start of the year.

The wood, which is used around the world as a veneer and in the construction of guitars, sells for around $5,000 (£3,100) per cubic metre.

The government of Madagascar has been struggling to raise finance since the country’s political crisis in January, in which current president Andry Rajoelina deposed the sitting administration led by Marc Ravalomanana.

This was condemned as a coup by many Western leaders. Millions of dollars in foreign aid have been withdrawn and a decline in the country’s lucrative $390 million-a-year tourism industry has taken place as a result.

The government argues that the lifting of the ban on timber exports is a temporary measure, allowing for trees uprooted by cyclones that hit the island last year to be removed.

Under the terms of the decree, 13 operators have been granted permission to ship 25 containers of timber each, with a 72 million ariary (£22,500) tax levied on each container.

But according to Ndranto Razakamanarina, the head of local environmental group Voahary Gasy (Madagascan Nature) and a former government timber official, the legalisation of wood exports has provided illegal timber traders with an opportunity to shift vast stockpiles of timber that has already been felled.

“There have always been stocks piled up everywhere,” he said. “These operators hide them, and then as soon as there’s an opportunity they bribe the government and produce their ‘stocks’.

“Bizarrely, every time there’s a cyclone, the trees that are affected are always precious wood. Yet they are the hardest and logically the ones that should fall last.”

The forests of Madagascar are essential to the island’s extraordinary biodiversity. Over 100 species of ebony and 47 species of rosewood that are found on Madagascar are unique to the island.

The wide variety of wildlife stems from the island’s separation from Africa over 160 million years ago, since which time ecosystems have evolved that are distinct from that found on the African continent.

In addition, its topography and climate is highly varied, with rainforests along the eastern coast, dry forests in the west, mountains in the north and desert in the south.

Around 68 per cent of its plant life, 92 per cent of its reptiles and 98 per cent of its land mammals are not found naturally anywhere else on Earth. The latter group includes the lemur, whose 50 sub-species are native to the island.

However, deforestation, intensive agriculture and population growth have endangered much of the island’s wildlife.

Just a tenth of the lemur’s rainforest habitat remains today, and it is feared that it and the chameleon could become extinct by 2100.

The aye-aye, considered one of the world’s most evolutionarily distinct animals, is also in danger of being driven to extinction.

The WWF said it feared more export licences would be granted by the government in an attempt to raise cash. It wants rosewood to be registered as an endangered species.

“Preliminary research shows rosewood is under extreme pressure,” said Niall O’Connor, head of WWF’s Indian Ocean region office.

“If it was registered as endangered then much tighter regulation would be required for both export and import.”

By Jonathan Liew, © (www.telegraph.co.uk) 12/10/2009
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The timber dealers have descended on indigenous trees on the Coast to fill orders for charcoal burning, carving, construction of boats and new buildings.

In the mad rush for timber, protected areas like the mangrove forests have not been spared, while charcoal burners and woodcarvers occasionally invade the Tsavo for wood.

According to Bernard Orinda, District Forest Officer at Gede, the coastal towns of Lamu and Kilifi are becoming notorious for illegal harvesting of indigenous trees, to the point of endangering the Coastal ecosystem.

We have arrested several poachers with wood, says Orinda. At least four or five cases are reported every month.

However, farmers are now trying their hand at agroforestry. Experts working with local communities are initiating tree planting projects to supplement agriculture.

Jonathan Kituku Mungala, a 47-year-old farmer in Kibwezi, is among the farmers engaged in agroforestry, where he is intercropping melia volkensi, a tree species locals call Mukeu, with maize, cowpeas, and soya beans.

From Mombasas South Coast to Malindi, pockets of tree plantations are springing up and farmers hope these will soon translate into green villages.

Eucalyptus, cypress, casuarina, Mukeu and Mvule are popular species among farmers in Coast Province. In Kwale district, Mlima, Zombo and Maleje forests are being raided for Mvule.

According to Dr Balozi Kirongo, the driving force behind this is development activities and human settlement.

But timber harvesting is the most destructive, says Dr Kirongo. There are also cases of illegal harvesting of poles, firewood and medicinal plants.

Tests on select spots along the Coast show that the greening campaign is working, but farmers fear illegal logging, charcoal burning, bush fires and carving may eat into what they believe is their future food basket.

© East African (Kenya) 28/02/2009
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DENR Secretary Lito Atienza, who presented the seized chainsaws to the media at the DENR grounds in Quezon City, said the confiscation of the chainsaws bolstered their suspicion that illegal logging is on the rise with the onset of the summer season in the two provinces.

"The seizures confirmed our suspicion that illegal logging is on the upswing with the onset of the summer season. If left unabated, this will ruin further our already ravaged forests. Thats why we are stepping up our forest-protection efforts by strengthening our partnership with other law-enforcement agencies of the government, such as the Philippine National Police and the Armed Forces of the Philippines, as well as nongovernment organizations and other sectors," Atienza said.

Atienza disclosed that the operatives of DENRs Environmental Law Enforcement Task Force (ELETF) were backed up by elements from the Naval Intelligence Special Forces of the Philippine Navy and the 1st and 16th Infantry Batallions of the Philippine Army based in Infanta, Quezon, and Tanay, Rizal, respectively.

Initial reports showed that the chain saws were not registered with the local DENR offices in Infanta and Tanay, which is in violation of Republic Act (RA) 9175, or the Chain Saw Act of 2002, which regulates the ownership and use of chain saws in the country.

These chain saws are on the high-end of the market and only big-time financiers taking advantage of our poor upland farmers can afford to provide them with these expensive equipment, Atienza said, as he cited that job opportunities in uplands are now being opened up by the government through the Green Collar Jobs program meant to precisely give upland dwellers a better alternative livelihood instead of allowing themselves to be exploited by financers of illegal-logging operations.

A brand-new chain saw costs as much as P40,000, while a secondhand one costs about P18,000.

The ELETF operation in sitio Alas-asin, barangay Daraitan in Tanay, Rizal, led to the apprehension of four stihl chain saws and a passenger jeepney loaded with 101 pieces of lumber, with a total volume of 1,342 board feet, and 30 pieces of flitches equivalent to 1,095 board feet.

Another operation of ELEFT at sitio Manggahan in the same barangay netted a chain saw and 54 pieces of lumber equivalent to 860 board feet.

In Infanta, Quezon, an Izusu Elf truck with license plate UUC-320 was apprehended in the operation on March 4, in barangay Magsaysay, including one stilh chain saw and 247 pieces of abandoned lumber with a volume of 3,573 board feet.

The apprehended vehicles and all the forest products seized in the three-day operation are now stockpiled at the DENR office in Antipolo City for safekeeping pending further investigation.

11/03/2009
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