Loophole looms for illegal loggers ravaging Madagascar

WWF 7 Oct 09;

Antananarivo, Madagascar – An exceptional authorisation from the Malagasy transitional government for the export of raw and semi-processed precious woods risks opening a loophole for the legal export of illegally cut timber and encouraging further assaults on Madagascar's endangered forests and wildlife, conservation groups active on the island have said.

"It legalises the sale of illegally cut and collected wood onto the market (...) and constitutes a legal incentive for further corruption in the forestry sector. " said a communique published locally by WWF, Conservation International (CI) and the World Conservation Society (WCS).

The communique follows a Reuters report quoting Prime minister Monja Roindefo denying that the transitional government was legalising the plundering of forests, but refusing to rule out issuing future licences.

Niall O’Connor, Regional Representative for WWF Madagascar and West Indian Ocean Programm Office in Antananarivo says „ We condem the impact of the plundering of Madagascar’s forests, particularly the protected areas, on biodiversity and the loss of livelihood options for the local population.“

No forest containing precious woods is safe

A study about the „Evaluation of rosewood and ebony stocks in two communities in the North East and in the middle-west of the country“ commissioned by WWF Madagascar in August 2009 revealed shocking details about the professional exploitation of precious woods such as the above mentioned in Madagascar.

In Andranopasy, a community in western Madagascar, only six species of rosewood are left from previously 15. No rosewood trees with a trunk diameter of more than 30 centimeters have been found any more. Three species of rosewood are very unlikely to regenerate. Another species, Diospyros perrieri, is not regenerating any more as are five others in the two project sites.

«This can be explained by the abusive commercial exploitation of the forest by foreign economic players. Even more, the local population cannot benefit from the precious woods in their forest for their very survival. Wood workers are paid the equivilent of 2 Euros a day while rosewood sells at 8.5 Euros per kilogramm.» says the study.

Another statement, signed by 15 Madagascar and international conservation groups including WWF, said that “Precious woods are being extracted from forests by roving and sometimes violent gangs of lumbermen and sold to a few powerful businessmen for export. . . . Those exploiting the trees are also trapping endangered lemurs for food, and the forests themselves are being degraded as trees are felled, processed and dragged to adjacent rivers or roads for transport to the coast.

“No forest that contains precious woods is safe, and the country’s most prestigious nature reserves and favoured tourist destinations, such as the Marojejy and Masoala World Heritage Sites and the Mananara Biosphere Reserve, have been the focus of intensive exploitation. Currently thousands of rosewood and ebony logs, none of them legally exploited, are stored in Madagascar’s east coast ports, Vohémar, Antalaha, and Toamasina. The most recent decree will allow their export and surely encourage a further wave of environmental pillaging.”

WWF Madagascar is investigating whether rosewood can be registered as an endangered species according to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). This will increase and tighten regulations on both import and export.

Madagascar is home to abundant unique fauna and flora and one of the top biodiversity hotspots in the world, with a developing industry in sustainable eco-tourism.

The world-famous lemurs are a key symbol of the island – lemurs going into cooking pots to feed illegal loggers of rare woods is a different symbol entirely.

Madagascar forests face destruction
Gregoire Pourtier Yahoo News 9 Oct 09;

ANTANANARIVO (AFP) – Environmental groups are protesting the resumption of exports of precious woods from Madagascar, arguing that the wood is logged illegally and that the island's forests are being destroyed.

On September 21 a government decree "temporarily" legalized the export of "certain stocks" of precious woods, citing the need to "evacuate trees uprooted by the cyclones" that affected the north east of the island in 2008.

"This decree makes a mockery of efforts to work towards environmental good governance and a transparent system of marketing timber," said the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and Conservation International (CI).

A local conservation umbrella group Voahary Gasy has called for the decree to be "voided immediately" in order to halt the organized "destruction of Madagascar's natural resources and biodiversity."

Madagascar, an island the size of France, "has 47 species of rosewood and over 100 ebony species that occur nowhere else, and their exploitation is pushing some to the brink of extinction," a group of international wildlife organizations said in a statement this week.

"Those exploiting the trees are also trapping endangered lemurs for food, and the forests themselves are being degraded as trees are felled, processed and dragged to adjacent rivers or roads for transport to the coast."

Lemurs are endemic to Madagascar and the main threat to their continued existence is the destruction of their habitat.

At the beginning of the year, the previous administration had temporarily authorized the sale of precious woods. This decree was voided by the new transitional authorities, but only after almost all the stocks counted at the time -- several hundred containers -- had already left Madagascar.

If the total quantity set for export in the coming days are still unknown, 13 operators have been authorized to export a total of 25 containers each.

For a former government timber official it is more a case of "legalizing" timber felled illegally.

"Bizarrely, every time there's a cyclone, the trees that are affected are always precious wood" despite the fact "they are the hardest and logically the ones that should fall last," he said.

"There have always been stocks piled up everywhere. These operators hide them and then as soon as there's an opportunity they bribe the government and produce their 'stocks'," complained Ndranto Razakamanarina, the head of Voahary Gasy.

Madagascans have long hesitated to speak out on the subject, but given the scale of the illegal traffic Voahary Gasy has decided to speak out.

Razakamanarina, estimates that some 30,000 cubic metres of precious woods, the equivalent of 11,000 hectares of forest, have either been exported or are on the point of being exported since the start of the year.

Officials at the Environment ministry acknowledge having authorized the resumption of exports but say the move has been misinterpreted.

"Some people say it's a type of laundering, but if you look you can see it's a sort of stabilization," the director general of forests Julien Noel Rakotoarisoa told AFP.

"But it's true that since January there has been quite a lot of illegal logging, with people in the timber trade making the most of the situation," he said.

For him the solution is to ship out or auction off all current stocks and start again from scratch so that timber traders can no longer say that freshly-logged precious woods were in fact part of their "stocks".

"After that we'll apply the existing law," he said.

Rosewood, which is prized for marquetry, is a highly profitable business for traders, with a 20-foot container fetching between 60,000 and 100,000 dollars.