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| Cameroon
Hardwood Ban May Not Prove Effective In Slowing Rainforest Destruction |
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SAN
FRANCISCO - July 12 - "The government of Cameroon has slipped the world a fast
one. Instead of implementing its law banning all rainforest log exports, which
has been on the books since January, the government has exempted the two tree
species from which it makes the most money. It's a bad joke, as if Humboldt County,
California, wanted to protect its forests by banning all logging except for redwood.
Cameroon's log ban is not a forest protection measure, but rather an opportunity
to liquidate what's left of the country's old growth rainforests."
-Erick Brownstein, African Rainforest Campaign Director
Forest protection leaders who have been monitoring the deterioration of Central
Africa's rainforests reacted with alarm at the Cameroon government's exemption
of sapelli and ayous wood from a total log export ban that has been on the books
there since January. These two hardwoods are the most plentiful in Cameroon's
imperiled old growth rainforests. The continued trade in these species opens most
of Cameroon's forests to the destructive commercial logging that the ban was intended
to prevent.
The log export ban was a significant feature of Cameroon's 1994 forest policy
designed in conjunction with The World Bank's environmental unit. "Both then and
now," says RAN's Brownstein, "logging in Cameroon is completely out of control.
The government is overrun with corruption, and the forests and their inhabitants
- both human and animal - are in danger of being displaced or destroyed."
Logging roads cut deep into the heart of the rainforest will allow unprecedented
access to vast, remote forest regions and to the wild animal population. The commercial
hunting of wild animals has reached a fever pitch, far outstripping sustainable
consumption. The chimpanzee, as well as other great apes and endangered species,
are in peril of being wiped out by this so-named "bushmeat" trade.
This past February, AIDS scientists announced a study proving the source of Human
Immunodificiency Virus Type 1 (HIV-1), the virus that causes AIDS in humans, to
be a subspecies of chimpanzees native to the logging-threatened old growth rainforests
of Cameroon. Many of the healing medicines available today originated from rainforest
biological sources, and now it seems that a solution to the AIDS crisis may come
from the rainforests of West-Central Africa.
"Cameroon's refusal to ban all log exports practically assures that the old growth
rainforests that may hold effective treatments and a cure for AIDS will be cut
to the ground, and the chimpanzees that might carry answers tot he AIDS puzzle
will be killed for food," said Brownstein.
Rainforest Action Network works to protect the Earth's rainforests and support
the rights of their inhabitants through education, grassroots organizing and non-violent
direct action. RAN's Africa Campaign is funded as part of a $1-million grant from
the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund.
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