Madagascar forests face destruction
Antananarivo (AFP) Oct 9, 2009 – Environmental groups are protesting the resumption of exports of precious woods from Madagascar, arguing that the wood is logged illegally and that the island’s forests are being destroyed. On September 21 a government decree “temporarily” legalised the export of “certain stocks” of precious woods, citing the need to “evacuate trees uprooted by the cyclones” that affected the north east of the island in 2008. “This decree makes a mockery of efforts to work towards environmental good governance and a transparent system of marketing timber,” said the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and Conservation International (CI). A local conservation umbrella group Voahary Gasy has called for the decree to be “voided immediately” in order to halt the organised “destruction of Madagascar’s natural resources and biodiversity.” Madagascar, an island the size of France, “has 47 species of rosewood and over 100 ebony species that occur nowhere else, and their exploitation is pushing some to the brink of extinction,” a group of international wildlife organisations said in a statement this week, “Those exploiting the trees are also trapping endangered lemurs for food, and the forests themselves are being degraded as trees are felled, processed and dragged to adjacent rivers or roads for transport to the coast.” …
