GREENPEACE AND QUERCUS UNCOVER CRIMINAL TIMBER IN PORTUGAL

11 July 2000

Leixoes, Portugal -- Greenpeace and the environmental group Quercus today uncovered a cargo of logs and timber coming from a company found to be logging illegally in Cameroon only two weeks ago. The wood was about to enter the European market at the port of Leixoes in Portugal. Greenpeace discovered the wood as volunteers boarded the vessel Aegis, which was known to be carrying logs and timber from the Cameroonian rainforest where illegal and destructive logging practices are the norm (1).

The wood comes from SFID (Société Industrielle et Forestière de la Doumé) - a Cameroonian subsidiary of the French logging giant Rougier - which was found to be logging illegally during an official inspection by the Cameroonian Government at the end of June this year. The inspection team visited the Mbam-Inoubou area, where it found SFID to be logging beyond the legally agreed boundaries of its operation.

Rougier is one of the largest logging companies operating in Central Africa, and one of the biggest producers of tropical timber in the world. It has large logging operations in Gabon, Cameroon and Congo-Brazzaville, which together amount to more than 1 million hectares of pristine rainforest. The company also buys from third-party suppliers and acts as a subcontractor to log other logging licences. Consequently, the precise origin of the timber that Rougier is exporting is often very difficult to trace.

The area of Rougier's concessions, in the heart of the world's second largest tropical rainforest, is a region of extremely high cultural and ecological value. Some if its concessions contain important populations of endangered species such as western lowland gorillas, chimpanzees and forest elephants, and its logging operations have frequently created social tensions among local peoples.

Rougier has been operating in the Congo Basin for around 50 years, and in the early 1990s its SFID subsidiary was selected to manage the first of a number of pilot projects in Cameroon aimed at addressing concerns over the social and environmental impact of logging operations in Cameroon (2). Yet, for some of its operations Rougier is still only drafting management plans. More importantly, the company has shown no interest in certification by the Forest Stewardship Council - the only international timber certification scheme currently accepted by large environmental organisations such as WWF, Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace (3).

"Rougier's principal acitivity is the destructive exploitation of Africa's forests," said Greenpeace Forest Campaigner Filip Verbelen. "All of the company's operations in Cameroon are in areas of high conservation value forest, and forest dwelling and other rural communities are directly affected by its logging operations, which bring few - if any - benefits to local people."

Rougier exports much of its African timber to its own facilities in France, but has additional key markets in France, Italy and Spain, and increasingly in Southeast Asia. In addition to the timber from SFID arriving in Portugal today, the port at Leixoes is also holding sawntimber from SID (Société Industrielle de Djoum), another of Rougier's Cameroonian subsidiaries currently involved in criminal log production in the Congo Basin.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:
-- Tim Birch, Greenpeace Forest Campaigner onboard the MV Greenpeace: 0031 629 001152
-- Catherine Cotton, Greenpeace Forest Campaigner onboard the MV Greenpeace: 0031 625 031 006
-- Walter Gomez, Quercus Press Officer: 96587 6381
-- Maja Buhmann, Greenpeace Press Officer: 0049 171 8780 778
-- Background footage and stills are available from Greenpeace.

(2) The French Ministry of Cooperation and Development proposed a number of local pilot projects to assess these concerns, and the proposals were presented as a contribution to sustainable forest management. In spite of local objections in the early 1990s, the scheme went ahead, with SFID selected to manage to firest "aménagement Pilote Intégré" (API) in the Dimako region of Cameroon.

(3) The FSC has the only global forest certification system that meets international ecological standards, incorporates the interests of social, economic and environmental groups, and has a widely recognised labelling system. This system assures the chain of custody from the extraction of the wood, through processing to the final consumer. Unless independently certified at least according to the ecological standards of the FSC, it is not possible to guarantee that logging practices - whether legal or illegal - do not come from ancient forest destruction.