Background - 10 March, 2006
Every year around the world, 7 million hectares of ancient forest are cleared or severely degraded. That's the equivalent of 30 football fields a minute.
Landowner Sakas Aonomo, his wife Tusue Sakas and daughter, Warume Sakas, walking through Log Camp 56, Wawai Guavi Block 3, Middle Fly, Western Province, PNG.
The Paradise Forests are being destroyed faster than any other on forest on the planet. Much of the large intact forest landscapes have already been cut down, 72 percent in Indonesia and 60 percent in Papua New Guinea.
In Indonesia alone, an area of forest at least the size of Wales (around 2 million hectares) disappears every year. When the bulldozers and chainsaws move in, the damage is staggering. In Papua New Guinea, for example, studies show that industrial loggers destroy seventeen trees for every one that is felled and removed.
What is illegal logging?
Logging is illegal when the timber is harvested, processed, transported, brought or sold in violation of national laws.
Laws can be violated at many different stages of the supply chain such as:
- Obtaining logging concessions illegally (e.g. via corruption and bribery, or without lawful consent).
- Violating export bans.
- Cutting protected tree species or extracting them from a protected area.
- Taking out more trees than permitted, cutting down under sized or oversized trees, or logging outside a permitted area.
- Fraudulent declaration to customs of the amount or nature of timber present.
- Use of fraudulent documents to smuggle timber internationally.