GREENPEACE INTENSIFIES ACTION AGAINST IMPORTS OF ILLEGAL AND DESTRUCTIVE TIMBER FROM AFRICAN RAINFORESTS

13th July 2000, Vilagarcia. de Arosa, Spain

Four Greenpeace activists this morning discovered another cargo of logs and sawn timber coming from companies involved in criminal logging in Cameroon's last ancient forests. A quantity of lumber found on board the cargo vessel Ranger1 comes from the sawmill of the Lebanese logging company Société Forestière Hazim (SFH), one of the largest logging companies in Cameroon, with a reputation for illegal and destructive logging activities. Timber from SFH is currently being imported into several European countries including UK, France, Netherlands and Belgium.

At the moment the ship is not able to enter the harbour. 4 Greenpeace activists have climbed the ship's mast, 2 others have chained themselves to the anchor chain after having "renamed" the vessel "African Forest Crime". Greenpeace demands the timber not to be offloaded.

The cargo was uncovered when the Greenpeace volunteers boarded the cargo vessel Ranger1 as it carried almost 6,000 tons of African rainforest timber into the port of Vilagarcia de Arosa in northern Spain. With forestry concessions totaling 157,000 ha, plus significant purchases of logs from third party suppliers, Hazim is one of the largest timber exporters in Cameroon. It has a history of violating forestry laws and of creating social conflicts. In late December 1999, SFH was fined 10,000,000 CFA for "anarchic logging outside the defined boundaries of the legally allowed license" as discovered during an inspection by Cameroon's Ministry of Environment and Forests (MINEF).

Towards the end of June this year, a further Government inspection revealed that SFH had trashed almost an entire concession that it had obtained only in late 1997; the concession should have been managed over a minimum 15 year period. Large-scale logging by Hazim was also observed in a part of their concession which had not yet been approved for logging. Following the presentation of the inspection team's findings to the highest level in MINEF last week, a decision was taken to exclude Hazim from participating in Cameroon's upcoming public auction of new forest concessions.

The cargo also included logs from La Forestière de Campo (HFC), a subsidiary of the French logging giant Bolloré. One of HFC's logging licences (no 1702) is located within the boundaries of the Campo Reserve - Cameroon's second largest protected area.

The action in Spain follows earlier efforts to highlight the import of illegal and destructive timber throughout EU and G8 countries. Greenpeace activists at the Portuguese port of Leixoes have occupied the cargo vessel Aegis now for more than 60 hours as part of their protest against the import of criminal timber into the EU.