Two-Year Ban Placed on Mahogany Logging in the Amazon
8/1/98
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Title: Two-Year Ban Placed on Mahogany Logging in the Amazon
Source: Reuters
Status: Copyrighted, contact source to reprint
Date: 8/1/98
BRASILIA - Brazil on Tuesday placed a two-year ban on mahogany logging in much
of the
Amazon, a move environmentalists welcomed as a step towards controlling
deforestation.
A decree published in the government gazette said the ban did not apply to
sustainable
management areas approved before July 1996 nor to planted forests.
It added that the environment ministry and the government's Environment
Institute (Ibama)
would announce within 90 days new rules for sustainable logging of the virola
tree in the
Amazon region.
Environmental group Greenpeace said the decision was a step in the right
direction,
extending and tightening a 1996 moratorium on new permits for logging mahogany.
"We think this is a positive measure on the part of the government but it is
still not
enough," said Paulo Adario, Greenpeace's spokesman in Brazil. "But it does
create a legal
framework for the fight against the illegal market in mahogany."
Illegal trading in the prized trees is considered one of the principal causes
for
deforestation of the Amazon.
Brazil stunned environmentalists in January when it published long-awaited data
based on
satellite pictures that showed an area twice the size of Belgium - 23,259 square
miles
(60,257 square km) - had been deforested between 1995 and 1997.
Loggers often cause indiscriminate damage to virgin forest when chopping down
mahogany
and their paths are commonly used by settlers who clear the land to graze
cattle.
Government measures have cut the amount of mahogany timber companies are
officially
allowed to log to 65,000 cubic meters (2.3 million cubic feet) in 1997 from
150,000 cubic
meters (5.3 million cubic feet) in 1990, Adario said.
"Companies which are installed in the Amazon have more than enough capacity to
provide
mahogany to international consumers. Despite this, there has been an important
rise in
demand for mahogany in the domestic market," he added.
Greenpeace has asked the government to tighten controls on the exploitation of
the trees
by listing its plantings of bigleaf mahogany on Appendix II of the Convention on
International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).
Being listed in the appendices of CITES places curbs of varying tightness on the
international trade in a species or product. Ivory and rhino horn are among
products so
listed.
c Reuters Limited 1998.