Logging of tropical forests proceeds at alarming rate

Press, 19 September 1985, Page 41

Logging of tropical forests proceeds at alarming rate

By

ROBERT MAHONEY,

Reuters (through NZPA) Kuching, Malaysia The upper reaches of the great rivers of North Borneo run red when it rains, the life blood of Asia’s great heart of darkness draining away. Monsoon rains lash the great swaths of exposed red earth cut through the lush jungle by loggers. The precious top soil runs off. Forests collapse, rivers silt up, animals and fish die, people suffer. The scene is repeated in most of the 70 countries with tropical forests which belt the globe at the equator. “The world’s tropical forests are being destroyed at a rate of three times the area of Switzerland every year and a large percentage of the remaining. forest will be gone by the end of the century,” according to a World Wildlife Fund study. In Malaysia, the world’s biggest exporter of tropical timber, the trees are falling to the axe at an alarming rate. “Deforestation is about double or more the world average and peninsular Malaysia may already become a timber importer in the 19905,” the W.W.F. said. Logging, agriculture, mining, hydro-electric dams and old-style slash-and-burn farming all take a heavy toll on the forest and the complex web of plant and animal life it supports, naturalists say. Much of the virgin jungle on the peninsula which once supported sizeable populations of tigers, leopards, elephants, Sumatran rhinoceroses, crocodiles and numerous birds long ago disappeared under colonial plantations. Forests in the east Malaysian States of Sarawak and Sabah on Borneo fared better until the 1970 s when the buzz of chain saws began to ring more frequently through the woods, particularly in under-populated Sabah, naturalists said.

Timber prices have been in the doldrums for the last two years but bright yellow bulldozers continue to haul away giant hardwoods from the Borneo rain forests. Tethered into rafts hundreds of metres long, the logs meander down the mighty river arteries of Sarawak bound for Japan, the world’s biggest hardwood importer. The Japanese leave their own forests uncut and import three billion dollars worth of hardwoods a year. ‘We do not know how long the forests can withstand such logging,” said one naturalist in Sabah who asked not to be named. “The plain fact is we do not understand the ecological web in a rain forest because it is so delicate. Light, well-managed logging and the forest could come back. But it would never be the same as before.” The tropical forest is the oldest and most complex biological system on earth. In Borneo it contains some of the richest concentrations of plant and wildlife species in the world. “One acre (0.4 hectares) of forest can contain hundreds of species of tree but only about 20 are commercial,” Hii Sui Cheng, a consultant to the Sarawak logging industry, told Reuters. “The trick is to get them out without damaging the rest.”

That is where the industry fails miserably according to many naturalists and local people. They are not against exploiting a resource which earns Malaysia ?1.7 billion in exports a year. It is the loggers’ methods which incur their wrath. “I’m not against the timber people,” said James Masing, a Sarawak State assemblyman and staunch campaigner for the native Iban community. “Resources have to be exploited. It is the manner in which it is done that I object to,” he said in an interview. In felling one commercial

tree loggers may destroy dozens of others, he explains. More timber is left to rot than is hauled out. Saplings are damaged, ground is laid bare causing soil erosion and inhibiting new growth. Roads into the forest built without gullies turn into rivers of red laterite clay in the frequent rains. This flows into the rivers which silt up. State regulations forbid such practices but they are either not enforced or ignored, according to timber trade sources. “Nobody gives a damn about regulations,” said one Sarawak naturalist. “A contractor is often working on a wafer-thin profit margin and has to cut corners,” he said. The contractors, often medium-sized Chinese-

owned businesses, usually work for the timber concessionaires who want to maximise return from their allocation of forest.

Concessions are in the gift of governments which have used them to reward supporters and gain political influence, according to politicians. “A man given a small concession of say 100,000 acres (40,468 hectares) will take all the timber he can out of it,” said Masing who wants fewer permits awarded. Neither the Government nor private firms have made much effort at replanting while untouched forest still remains. Masing tours Sarawak to listen to the grievances of Ibans who frequently block logging roads to protest against inadequate or non-

existent compensation for damage to their lands. “Their logging kills the wild pigs and fish they hunt,” he said. ‘Some young men leave the longho’use for jobs in the logging camps. But that only increases Iban dependence on the loggers. Rice production drops, traditional skills diminish. ’What happens in five years when the timber is cut and the camps move on?”