Yahoo – AFP,
Ye Aung Thu, 7 May 2014
 |
A worker
carries a saw where teak trees once grew in the Bago Region of
Myanmar after the
land was scorched ahead of replanting, April 5, 2014 (AFP
Photo/Ye Aung Thu)
|
A worker
carries a saw where teak trees once grew in the Bago Region of Myanmar after
the land was scorched ahead of replanting, April 5, 2014
Bago
(Myanmar) (AFP) - Ashen earth strewn with the limbs of once-mighty trees is all
that is left of the fearsome forest in central Myanmar that Wa Tote remembers
from her youth.
"We
would only dare enter in a big group. The forest was deep and had many wild
animals. Now we cannot even find a tree's shadow to shelter under when we are
tired," the 72-year-old told AFP.
At one
point tigers were so common in the area that their bones were traded cheaply.
Now they have vanished into memory.
Large
swathes of the undulating landscape of the Bago mountains have been stripped
bare by logging firms over recent years and the last remnants of wood are being
burnt.
Locals say
there are plans to replant the area with valuable teak trees -- though even if
they do, these will take up to 80 years to reach maturity.
Logging in
Myanmar exploded under the former junta, as the generals tossed aside
sustainable forestry practices in their thirst to cash in on vast natural
resources.
Experts say
an insatiable world appetite for precious hardwoods is threatening rare species
and helping to drive deforestation in one of the last major areas of tropical
forest in Asia.
The country
lost almost 20 percent of its forest cover between 1990 and 2010, according to
the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation.
Widespread
degradation of the most densely wooded areas means that so-called "closed
forest" more than halved in size, from 30.9 million to 13.4 million
hectares.
Experts say
corruption and poor protection have enabled rampant illegal logging that lines
the pockets of crony businessmen, soldiers and rebels groups alike.
A
quasi-civilian government that replaced outright military rule in 2011 has
sought to stem the flood of timber from the country with a ban on the export of
raw logs which took effect on April 1.
"Our
ban will be very effective. There will be cutting, distribution and finishing
of timber products locally, so that we can also increase employment
opportunities," said the director general of the Ministry of Environmental
Conservation and Forestry, Tin Tun.
Wildlife
group WWF said the biggest driver of forest loss has been large-scale conversion
for agriculture, often after woodland is degraded by logging or the collection
of wood for fuel.
It welcomed
the export ban and said the government has also slashed quotas for teak and
other hardwoods by 60 percent and 50 percent respectively for the coming fiscal
year compared to 2012/13.
"But
given the high volume of illegal logging and exports in Myanmar, it will take a
long time before we see how effective the ban will be," said WWF's Myanmar
conservation programme manager Michelle Owen.
Appetite
for destruction
In
mountainous northern Myanmar close to the Chinese border, logging roads score
the landscape as firms drive ever deeper into pristine forests.
"Stopping
logging has to happen now," said Frank Momberg of conservation group Flora
and Fauna International, which is struggling to protect the newly discovered
and critically endangered Myanmar snub nosed monkey.
There are
thought to be barely 300 of the flat-faced primates left in the dense forests
of Kachin state at the eastern tip of the Himalayas.
Large scale
mechanical felling is stripping even steep hillsides, with the loss of tree
cover causing landslides and further environmental destruction,
conservationists warn.
 |
A worker
clears the area where teak trees once grew in the Bago Region of
Myanmar after
the land was scorched ahead of replanting, April 5, 2014 (AFP
Photo/Ye Aung
Thu)
|
Chinese
workers have flooded into the area, fuelling demand for the monkeys to be
hunted for food and traditional medicine, Momberg said.
Other
species also inhabit the threatened forests, including the red panda, Blyth's
Tragopan pheasant and the Takin, known as a goat antelope.
"A
complete ecosystem is being destroyed by this radical logging," Momberg
said.
He said the
loggers are supplying rare woods for a furniture industry in Tengchong, in
China's Yunnan province, using maple trees to make delicate carved tables and
protected Taiwania conifers for "luxurious coffins".
Flora and
Fauna is setting up the approximately 250,000 hectare Imawbum national park
with Myanmar's forestry department and have created hunting-free zones with the
support of local villages.
'Extinction frontier'
China
recorded importing 10 million cubic meters of round logs from its impoverished
neighbour between 2000 and 2013 -- almost twice Myanmar's officially registered
global export trade of 6.4 million cubic meters for the period, according to
the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) campaign group.
Some 84
percent of logs imported into China went by land, despite longstanding rules
barring exports from any other route than through Myanmar’s Yangon and Dawei
ports, making them "legally questionable at best and downright illegal at
worst," the EIA said.
In a recent
report based on Myanmar forestry documents and global trade data, the EIA said
the country was believed to have exported up to 3.5 times more logs than the volumes
officially recorded between 2000 and 2014.
"Such
a gap is indicative of widespread criminality and corruption in Myanmar's
timber sector," the report said, estimating this vast shadow industry was
worth up to $5.7 billion.
And despite
the export ban, trucks loaded with logs were seen around the Yangon port after
April 1, while more than 60 tonnes of illegal timber were recently found in
trucks disguised as anti-logging festival floats.
Tony Neil,
forest governance advisor at Myanmar environmental group EcoDev, said the
current dry season has seen an "unprecedented" amount of timber
crossing the China-Myanmar border, with several hundred trucks a day making the
journey.
Demand is
driven from all over the world, with timber "laundered" through ports
in Malaysia and Singapore and the price of prized logs such as rosewood
shooting up.
"It's
like an extinction frontier," he said.
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