24 April 2006
The foresters and their GPS
Foresters at work with GPS
© Greenpeace/ Prout
Linzon is one of the foresters working for a local NGO called Foundation for People and Community Development (FPCD). He has spent the last two months here at Lake Murray area working with Greenpeace and local communities. With his guidance we do the boundary marking of the Cassowary clan’s forest.
Back at home in Finland, the word “forester” would make a bad ringing in my ear. Usually, when a forester goes to the forest it means that he or she is looking for a good profit at the expense of biodiversity. Here, they help local communities to start up eco-forestry projects.
This means that the felling of a few trees per hectare doesn’t affect the biodiversity. Also, the profits of the produced eco-timber will remain in the community.
Until the beginning of this year the FPCD foresters did not use GPS – when they did boundary marking they used a 100 metre-long measuring tape to calculate the length of boundaries.
The Cassowary clan guys showed us through their forest and we walk the boundary of the area that will be set aside for eco-forestry. Back at the camp, Linzon goes through the information saved in the GPS. We find out the area covers 162 hectares – only a small part of the clan’s total land area. With the old measuring tape system the process would have taken up to three days. Sometimes technical developments can be used for the benefit of nature.
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