With Mozambique losing 220 000 hectares of forest a year, part of the answer is a government claimp-down on illegal log exports.
It had proposed a total ban on all exports of unprocessed logs, regardless of the tree species from which they came, reported the Maputo daily, Noticias.
A bill on this matter has already been drafted and deposited with the country’s parliament.
Although there have been many haphazard attempts in the past to outlaw the export of logs from particular species of hardwoods, this would be the first blanket ban on the export of all logs. It would mean that forest wardens and customs inspectors would no longer have to identify the type of trees the logs had come from.
But Noticias reported that it was bound to meet with ferocious opposition from logging interests who are accused of destroying Mozambique’s forests to sell as unprocessed wood to foreign buyers, often from China.
