Close the loopholes

http://www.guyanachronicle.com/letters.html

Close the loopholes
Guyana Chronicle, 31 May 2007

IN YOUR issue of May 29, 2007, you quote Minister Robert Persaud as
saying at his meeting with Region Six forestry stakeholders on May 28
that:

“So this notion that we are over-foresting, over-exploiting and
chopping down logs while the Guyana Forestry Commission and nobody is
doing anything is just a myth because the records are there for us to
see,” the minister told the gathering. This repeats the minister’s
assertion which you published on December 9, 2006.

Every logger knows that you cannot speak of trees in the aggregate. If
a logger or tree spotter did not have to search among the over 1,000
species in the Guyana forest for what they call ‘merchantable’ species,
then there would certainly be no over-harvesting at current rates of
harvesting of much less than 20 cubic metres per hectare.

In the case of Guyana, however, the records show that a very small
number of species make up the large proportion of trees cut and
exported. Purpleheart, for example, is estimated to make up 1 per cent
of the standing stock of Guyana’s forests. Yet this one species
comprises 30 per cent of annual exports by log volume.

It is on account of this selective over-harvesting of a few commercial
or ‘merchantable’ species that the GFC’s Code of Practice for Timber
Harvesting (2nd Edition, November 2002) stipulates the following:

“Sustained yields can only be ensured if a minimum stocking is retained
after logging for each individual desirable species [emphasis in
original]. GFC recently developed growth and yield models that can
assist in determining the number of trees that can be felled per ha as
well as the minimum size (diameter) for each individual species. This
means that individual tree-marking rules need to be developed for each
particular forest type under different stand conditions” (p. 8).

Minister Persaud’s assertions also beg the question: if logging is
being done sustainably in Guyana, why then is the Barama Company not
able to source all the trees it cuts and exports from its own 1.6
million hectare concession? Why is the Barama Company illegally logging
in an additional 408,000 hectares of public forests ostensibly held by
other forest concessionaires and titled Amerindian communities?

The minister refers to the very long-delayed GFC Bill and Act being
taken to Parliament in the upcoming months.

I do hope that the draft Forests Act will be thoroughly revised to
close loopholes against illegal and unsustainable logging and against
speculative trading in harvesting concessions over the national forest
patrimony.

JANETTE BULKAN