28 April 2006

Gearing up for eco-forestry

Amele from FPCD
© Greenpeace/ Pykalainen

Amele has been doing maintenance work and a test run of the portable sawmill. He is from a local NGO called Foundation for People and Community Development (FPCD). People from FPCD are doing the eco-forestry training for local tribes. The training covers forest management, marketing, administration and sawmill use.

Next week, Amele will start working with participants from around the lake and give practical lessons on how the mill works. The portable machinery is owned by FPCD but sold later to local clans with the income they earn from eco-forestry timber. If a clan produces 3 cubic meters of eco-timber each week for three months, that makes them enough money to pay for the mill.

After that all their income can be spent on developing the local community. This country has no social security system. People here are looking forward to spending the money on education, healthcare, building materials for houses and better clothing for the children.

The sawmill in action at a recent demo
© Greenpeace/Behring

By doing this kind of small-scale eco-forestry in the community, the natural environment is preserved. For example, the Cus Cus Bamboo clan who we visited has a Forest Management Area of 35 hectares. There is an average of seven trees per hectare, ready to be felled over the next few years. No trees are felled unless there is an order for the timber.

This kind of forestry is even more efficient when you compare the use of wood. With the portable saw mill, up 70% of the wood’s volume can be produced into eco-timber. Traditional large scale logging camps can recover only 30% of the log.

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://weblog.greenpeace.org/cgi-bin/mv/mt-tb.cgi/1638

Comments

Posted by: ariel at May 1, 2006 11:28 PM