Greenpeace protests sawmill processing African rainforest destruction

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Greenpeace activists enter the Veneta Legnami sawmill in the city of Carbonera, Northern Italy.

Industrial logging in Africa is often carried out in a highly destructive way and illegal logging is rampant in the entire region. Logging often creates major social conflicts and it is the driving factor for the commercial bushmeat trade in the region. The forests of the Congo Basin are areas of high ecological value upon which many forest dwelling communities depend. This habitat for endangered animals such as forest elephants, chimpanzees and lowland gorillas is being rapidly decimated by a logging industry that leaves death and destruction in its wake.

Italy is a major consumer of timber coming from Africa, but is doing very little to prevent such imports, even those coming from companies involved in illegal logging activities. The Veneta Legnnami sawmill processes timber from logging companies such as Ingéniere Forestière(1) and SEFN(2) in Cameroon and Cristal(3)l in Congo-Brazzaville.

"Italy is taking over the EU presidency tomorrow. Our country should use this important opportunity to clean up the timber trade," said Sergio Baffoni of Greenpeace Italy. "EU governments should only use timber coming from well-managed forests and introduce new EU legislation to ban the trade in illegally harvested timber."

The current activity in Italy is the latest activity in a series of actions currently taking place all over Europe to stop trading in timber from ancient forest destruction and to call for a ban on the European trade in illegally harvested timber.

The destruction of the world's last ancient forests robs local peoples of the resources needed for their survival. Greenpeace is campaigning to protect the world's remaining ancient forests by promoting ecologically sustainable and social responsible forest use and the establishment of protected areas. Protected forest areas are dedicated to the conservation of their biological diversity, and of natural and associated cultural resources, and are established and managed respecting traditional land rights-particularly those of indigenous peoples. They are protected from road building and industrial activities.

"FREE THE RAINBOW WARRIOR"

http://act.greenpeace.org/ams/e?a=825&s=forest_skin

Notes: (1) Ingénierie Forestiere is a Cameroon logging company that has been involved in large scale illegal logging operations south of the Dja reserve, a world heritage site. (2) SEFN is a cameroon logger involved in destructive logging operations that has received a fine for forestry activities without legal paperwork. (3) Cristal is involved in a destructive logging operation in Northern Congo in a rainforest area of high conservation value for endangered animals such as forest elephants and lowland gorillas. Cristal is controlled by the Lebanese timber company Hazim that has an extremely bad reputation due to its large-scale illegal logging operations in neighbouring Cameroon, costing the Cameroon government millions of dollars.