Brazil Bans Amazon Mahogany Logging for Two Years
7/28/98
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Title: Brazil Bans Amazon Mahogany Logging for Two Years
Source: Reuters
Status: Copyrighted, contact source to reprint
Date: 7/28/98
BRASILIA, July 28 (Reuters) - 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.