Report says illegal logging declining (worldwide)

[Turborama]

Source: AP

Tougher enforcement and strict new rules have led to a dramatic drop in illegal logging, sparing woodland in Cameroon, national parks in Indonesia, and rain forests in the Amazon, a British think tank said yesterday.

Worldwide, an international clampdown on unlawfully harvested timber has helped protect up to 42 million acres of forest over the past few years — roughly the same area covered by the state of Illinois, according to a report published yesterday by the London-based Chatham House.

Since 2002, the report said, production of illegal timber has fallen by nearly 25 percent.

“We’re a quarter of the way there,’’ said Sam Lawson, one of the report’s authors. He expressed the hope that newer regulations — such as a European law passed last week that will ban the import of illegal timber by 2012 — would cut the amount of illegal logging further.

Read more: http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2010/07/16/report_says_illegal_logging_declining/

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Illegal Logging Has Dropped Dramatically—Or Has It?

by Erik Stokstad on July 15, 2010 4:56 PM

A new analysis suggests that illegal logging has declined 22% worldwide since 2002, thanks to stricter government policies and enforcement. The progress has spared some 17 million hectares of forest in Brazil, Indonesia, and Cameroon alone, according to a http://www.illegal-logging.info/item_single.php?it_id=939&it=document">report released today by Chatham House, an international policy think tank in London. Some experts are skeptical of the estimates and conclusions, however.

The report examined trends in illegal logging in five major timber-producing nations, as well as imports by five other countries. By examining official government data, checking with local experts, and conducting various analyses, the authors — Sam Lawson of Chatham House and Larry MacFaul of the http://www.vertic.org/">Verification Research, Training and Information Centre— conclude that illegal logging has fallen in the past decade by 50% in Cameroon, by between 50% and 75% in the Brazilian Amazon, and by 75% in Indonesia. The situation seems to have worsened in Ghana, and no firm conclusions could be drawn about Malaysia, they add. By extrapolating from these countries, Lawson and MacFaul arrived at an estimated 22% drop globally. "We're very confident about our conclusions in general terms," says Lawson.

Other experts caution that measuring illegal logging is extremely difficult. "I worry about the robustness of the numbers," says Nadine Laporte of the Woods Hole Research Center in Falmouth, Massachusetts. "The error bars are huge and they are not giving them."

The authors attribute most of the improvement to better governance and enforcement in timber-producing nations, although conceding that the global recession has likely curbed demand for wood. Lawson points out that the illegal logging started declining before the recession started and that the proportion of logging that is illegal has also fallen. The report was commissioned and paid for by the U.K. Department for International Development, which has funded efforts to curb illegal logging through government reform.

Read more: http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2010/07/illegal-logging-has-dropped.html

[waronbanks]

1. So illegal logging is down?

Why do I Have a feeling it has more to do with the Corporates writing laws that make it no longer illegal? That would be my guess based on what Ive seen the last 20 years.

[panzerfaust]

2. ... as forests to clear-cut disappear?

[Po_d Mainiac]

3. Up heyuh it was easier re-define a clear-cut

Leave a couple trees every other acre, and voila.....problem solved :grr: