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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