VARIOUS: ENVIRONMENTAL GROUPS SAY MALAYSIAN TIMBER MERCHANTS ARE ILLEGALLY SMUGGLING RARE HARDWOOD FROM INDONESIA

Record ID: 834856

  • Title: VARIOUS: ENVIRONMENTAL GROUPS SAY MALAYSIAN TIMBER MERCHANTS ARE ILLEGALLY SMUGGLING RARE HARDWOOD FROM INDONESIA
  • Date: 1st March 2004
  • Summary: (L!1) JAVA SEA, OFF THE COAST OF KALIMANTAN, INDONESIA (REUTERS) GREENPEACE SHIP "RAINBOW WARRIOR" AT SEA CREWMEMBER LOOKING THROUGH BINOCULARS GREENPEACE CREW WATCHING MALTESE-REGISTERED "GREVENO" LOADING SUSPECTED ILLEGAL LOGS VARIOUS OF TIMBER BEING LOADED ON TO SHIP (SOUNDBITE)(English) STEVE CAMPBELL, GREENPEACE CAMPAIGNER, SAYING: "Further behind me we have ship called The Greveno, it is just currently loading with sawn timber and plywood. We believe that this timber has come from illegal concessions in the river which is directly in front of us." VIEWS OF TIMBER ON BARGES COMING OUT OF RIVER GREENPEACE ACTIVISTS IN DINGHY WATCHING TIMBER BEING LOADED
  • Embargoed: 16th March 2004 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: MELAKA, MUAR AND PASIR GUDANG, MALAYSIA/ BOGOR, JAKARTA, KALIMANTAN, SUMATRA AND JAVA SEA, INDONESIA/ LONDON, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM
  • City:
  • Country: Malaysia At Sea
  • Topics: Crime,Environment,Politics,Light / Amusing / Unusual / Quirky
  • Reuters ID: LVA2YG8TZPLL2HJ2TWN9QIB3NVYB
  • Aspect Ratio:
  • Story Text: Environmental groups say Malaysian timber merchants are illegally smuggling rare hardwood from Indonesia, circumventing international regulations to protect dwindling rainforests.
    Malaysian ports and unscrupulous shipping agents are involved in smuggling illegally-felled timber, fuelling a trade that is wrecking fragile Indonesian forests, environmental campaign groups have charged.
    In a report released after a two year investigation, the U.S.-based Environmental Investigation Agency secretly filmed Malaysian businessmen boasting about a scheme in which they imported illegally-felled ramin timber from Indonesia, relabelled it as originating in Malaysia before exporting it, mainly to China, where it is made in to finished products like snooker and pool cues, dowel rods, picture frames and mop handles.
    Ramin is a threatened tree species found in primary rain forest across southeast Asia which is the dwindling habitat of rare orang-utans, Sumatran rhinos and sun bears.
    "Malaysia has a vast industry of ramin. They produce furnitures, all kinds of dowels and other stuff to the international market. They have got some supply, but not a huge one. And historically, they depend so much on a huge supply of ramin from Indonesia. And since Indonesia has banned ramin export, then we should have seen a reduction of Malaysia's ramin products -- which we haven't," said Hapsoro, director of Indonesia's leading environmental group Telapak which worked with the EIA on the investigation.
    Indonesia banned the felling and export of ramin in August 2001 in a bid to halt the decimation of its rainforests, but lax controls and official corruption have meant much of the trade has continued unchecked.
    Malaysia has opted out of an international moratorium on the ramin trade and is still allowed to sell the expensive wood overseas - as long as it is of Malaysian origin.
    Processed ramin can fetch up to $1,000 per cubic metre - incentive enough for Malaysian dealers to falsify details about the origin of their ramin to allow them to sell it abroad.
    During its investigation, EIA activists posed as timber merchants and secretly videotaped visits to Malaysian timber dealers and port officials.
    "A team of EIA investigators entered the port of Pasir Gudang in Malaysia pretending to be timber buyers and what we found was this timber ramin. This is all from Indonesia.
    Exporting this timber is illegal from Indonesia. And you can see the vast amount there," said one of the investigators Julian Newman as he showed Reuters video of vast stores of ramin in warehouses waiting to be shipped.
    The group also secretly videotaped conversations with a dealer who explained how the wood got from the forests of Indonesia to homes around the world and with a port official who boasted about the quantity of ramin the port handled.
    "This gentleman here is from the port authority,"
    Newman continues as the videotape rolls. "He specialises in certain types of cargo. All this time he thought that EIA people were interested in buying timber, so he is very upfront with us. He was looking to doing business with us so he was able to tell us all the details about how this fraud is being done," he said.
    Newman said the port official told the undercover investigators that Pasir Gudang alone was shipping out 4,500 cubic metres of ramin each month.
    Indonesia has protected zones and national parks dotted across its vast archipelago but struggles to protect them in the face of the lucrative illegal trade in timber.
    The EIA says it is up to both Malaysia and Indonesia to act against those involved in the trade.
    "We handed over our information over to the Malaysian authorities and of course we want the Malaysian authorities to act, and act decisively," says EIA Director Dave Currey.
    "Indonesia of course as well has got to carry out better enforcement, its got to arrest the kingpins. We name a kingpin in our new report -- go for him, find him, prove what's going on. We've got evidence. We need to see people like this taken out of the trade or it will just continue,"
    Currey says.
    Indonesia has urged a world-wide boycott of wood products from Malaysia to deter further buying of illegal logs from Indonesia.
    "I call on governments such as those in the European Union not to import any wood products from Malaysia as they are using illegal logs from Indonesia," Forestry Minister M.
    Prakosa was quoted by the Jakarta Post as saying on Thursday (February 12).
    The extent of the problems that Indonesia faces in protecting its forests was vividly illustrated by a recent trip by environmental group Greenpeace's famous boat - the 'Rainbow Warrior'.
    In a campaign to "Stop Forest Crime" Greenpeace took journalists into the Java Sea - off the coast of Borneo - where they attempted to contact ships they suspected of transporting illegally felled timber.
    While refraining from high-profile publicity stunts that have characterised Greenpeace campaigns in the past - the group nonetheless says it gathered significant evidence of illegal logging in Indonesia's national parks.
    In one incident - Greenpeace took journalists in a dinghy alongside a Maltese-registered boat which was loading timber from smaller boats that had come from the direction of a river that runs through the Tanjung Puting National Park.
    "Further behind me we have ship called The Greveno, it is just currently loading with sawn timber and plywood. We believe that this timber has come from illegal concessions in the river which is directly in front of us,"
    said Greenpeace campaigner Steve Campbell.
    Huge barges piled high with meranti logs and sawn plywood were a common sight during the trip. The wood was being loaded onto dozens of vessels, from huge bulk carriers with massive cranes and dozens of crew, to smaller more traditional craft with only two or three people on board.
    Indonesian environmental campaigners say as much as seventy percent of wood sent to mills in the country was from illegal logging.
    Greenpeace, the EIA and other environmental groups will press their concerns over illegal logging during a United Nations' sponsored meeting on biological diversity which starts on Wednesday (February 18) in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur. The meeting will endeavour to come up with a plan to slow significantly the rate of extinction of plant and animal species.
    Indonesia, with the third largest area of rainforest in the world after Brazil and the Democratic Republic of Congo, is on the front line of this battle that environmentalists warn will be lost unless something is done to stop illegal logging.
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