Brian Baring, traditional PNG landowner, makes his point outside Alchemy Partners UK office

Customary PNG landowner asks the timber trade to source 'good' wood

Today, Brian Baring, of the Gingilang clan on the north coast of Papua New Guinea (PNG), delivered a giant letter to Alchemy Partners, asking them to stop daughter company Montague L Meyer from trashing PNG's rainforests for plywood. Logging in PNG is some of the worst on the planet, with virtually all industrial logging being illegal.

Customary Landowner Brian Baring says, "I have seen our forests destroyed by foreign companies. They do not respect us or our culture, or our sacred sites. They run over our food gardens with their machinery. They drive their trucks and bulldozers through our streams polluting it with oil and mud with no regard that people downstream drink from those streams. They take the trees they want and destroy many many more to get to the trees they want."

Read Brian's account of how illegal logging is destroying the Gingilang way of life

The magnificent Paradise Forest of PNG is home to wildlife such as the tree kangaroo and the largest butterfly on earth - the Queen Alexandra's birdwing, with a wing span of over 11 inches - as well as millions of indigenous people who depend on this forest for their livelihood and way of life. Yet logging companies are voraciously plundering the rainforest, and the country could be logged out in 15 years.

He continued "I am in Europe to bring the message of my people to companies like Alchemy Partners and Montague Meyer and ask them to stop buying products that are made from the forests of Papua New Guinea, stolen from our land and our people."

Last year a major Greenpeace investigation uncovered a criminal trail of illegally logged rainforest timber from the world's largest tropical island, which is 'laundered' through China before arriving on shop shelves in the UK. Since then many companies, like Wolseley Build Centers, have agreed to remove all Chinese tropical hardwood plywood from their stores, however Montague L Meyer continues to sell it into the UK market place. Recent microscopic analysis of timber sold by the company has confirmed that it is made of Bintangor and other tropical species.

Greenpeace launches Forest Rescue station in PNG

During his UK trip, Mr Baring and Greenpeace also met members of the Timber Trade Federation (1) who have suspended trade in plywood made from PNG's rainforests and discussed the sourcing of more environmentally and socially responsible products.

Belinda Fletcher, Greenpeace Campaigner said, "The Timber Trade Federation has recognized that sourcing from Papua New Guinea (PNG) is currently unacceptable. They are now looking at domestic Chinese alternatives that are not sourced from ancient forests. Montague Meyer is one of the pariahs of the UK trade who continue to source from PNG."

She continued "There are good alternatives. Buy timber certified by the Forest Stewardship Council - it's the best way to guarantee that timber has come from environmentally and socially responsible sources."

Greenpeace is calling for legislation to ban the import of illegal timber into the UK and Europe and to ensure that all timber imports are legal and from well managed forests.

Notes

(1) Attendees included representatives of the Timber Trade Federation, Caledonian Plywood, FEPCO, Premier Forest Products and Graeme Holburn.

Local foresters and Greenpeace volunteers mark land boundaries in Papua New Guinea

Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, February 28, 2006
Greenpeace today launched a major initiative to help protect Asia Pacific's last remaining ancient rainforests - the so-called 'Paradise Forests' [1] - by unveiling its Global Forest Rescue Station in a remote part of Papua New Guinea.

Greenpeace volunteers from around the world will live and work alongside local landowners and eco-forestry trainers at the Global Forest Rescue Station, sited at Lake Murray in Western Province. They will help three Lake Murray tribes establish their rights over approximately 300,000 hectares of tribal territories by identifying, marking out and mapping their boundaries. This will help them protect the forests from destructive and illegal logging.

"Papua New Guinea's Kuni tribe has invited Greenpeace to set up this rescue station on their land. It will be a base to fast-track boundary marking the tribe's territories to save them from the logging industry and to showcase eco-forestry initiatives to the world," said Greenpeace Australia Pacific's Chief Executive Officer, Steve Shallhorn.

The launch was heralded by the arrival in Port Moresby of the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior, which received a traditional welcome by tribal groups and landowners.

Ken Mondiai, Head of the EcoForestry Forum, a network of environment groups working with Greenpeace, said: "We are honoured to welcome the Rainbow Warrior to mark the beginning of this exciting new approach to eco-forestry in Papua New Guinea."

Kuni clan leader, Sep Galeva, said: "We want to say no to loggers who come in and destroy everything. We want to do small scale logging by the landowners in a way that is sustainable and environment friendly."

The Paradise Forests are being logged faster than any other on Earth. In Papua New Guinea, less than one per cent of them have any form of protection and more than a quarter of a million hectares of primary forest are destroyed by logging companies each year. Globally, an area of ancient forest the size of a football pitch is destroyed every two seconds to grow products like soya for animal feed or to make products like toilet paper, wooden flooring and plywood.

"This new initiative is part of a global effort to protect the world's last ancient forests [2]. Unless action like ours in Papua New Guinea is taken worldwide, vast numbers of species of plants and animals will become extinct, rainfall patterns will be disrupted and the global climate will change even faster than it is now," said Steve Shallhorn.

After Port Moresby, the Rainbow Warrior will sail on 'Forest Crime Patrol' to draw attention to ongoing illegal logging across the entire region and to promote sustainable forestry.

Download the Greenpeace report: "Paradise Under Threat" (Adobe PDF format)

Notes to Editors:
[1] The Paradise Forests stretch from South East Asia, across the islands of Indonesia and on towards Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands in the Pacific.

[2] The Global Forest Rescue Station is part of the Greenpeace campaign to highlight the crisis faced by the forests and oceans in Asia Pacific and the rest of the world. In the lead up to the Summit for Life on Earth, the meeting of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity which begins on March 20th in Brazil, Greenpeace is calling on governments to establish a comprehensive network of protected areas around the world with effective law enforcement and management.