Always two sides to a story - but does that make it right?

Illegal logging is lower in Guyana than in many other countries
Monday, January 15th 2007
Dear Editor,

I wish to make two points on illegal logging and some driving forces in the forest sector of Guyana.

Many accusations have been levelled against the government for not doing enough to curb illegal logging. I wish to point out that illegal logging is far lower in Guyana than in many other comparable tropical forest producing countries. Studies have shown that the rate of illegal logging in Guyana in less than 5% of total production. In many countries illegal logging is carried out by armed gangs, and is a billion dollar industry in some countries. Police and the army usually are called in to assist, lives are also lost in the process. Fortunately this is non-existent in Guyana and all praise should go to the Guyana Forestry Commission (GFC) that these problems do not occur.

Illegal logging like fuel smuggling can never be totally eliminated but what we can do is keep it as low as possible and again I think the GFC is doing and has done an excellent job over the last five years or so to tackle this. What we need to understand as we develop more roads and river network is that this also creates access for poachers. If the joint services with their current resources cannot adequately cover our porous borders why do we expect miracles from the GFC monitoring team.

Secondly many furniture manufacturers including those who sell on the export market, forest exporters, lumber yards, sawmillers and other secondary users contribute to the illegal trade by buying timber without verifying the origin of the produce thereby contributing to the illegal trade. We all have a role to play in this process; it is one country and we should be our brother's keeper. The GFC will never be able to come up with a complete, robust system to stop illegal trade in its entirety and hence we the Guyanese people must do our part.

Some exporters of timber and value added products (furniture manufacturers) buy a small quantity of timber from a legitimate source and the balance from alleged illegal sources cheaply, but use the legitimate source to cover all the produce. The illegal timber is utilized overnight or within a few days so by the time the GFC officer comes to check it is hard to differentiate. These companies then use the small volume of legitimate timber and the chain of custody of legitimate operators to market their products overseas. For example if you buy from Barama in particular who have FSC certification then immediately your products are covered under this chain of custody of BCL, when in actuality only a small volume of timber was purchased from BCL. International buyers should therefore be cognizant of this and buy responsibly.

Yours faithfully,

Paul Taylor
StabroekNews