Arrests in seven recent forest destruction cases prove the towering
success of the State Forestry Bureau’s nationwide tree protection
campaign, forestry officials said Monday.
The seven cases include illegal logging, attack on forestry police
and forging logging licenses. They were uncovered earlier this
year.
The illegal logging case comes from Gongshan County in southwest
China’s
Yunnan Province where rampant damage to national forest
resources aroused wide concerns.
The local government violated the forest protection regulations by
issuing a 4,200-cubic-meter logging license to a trade company late
last year. Then the company went even farther, cutting more than
23,780 cubic meters of forest.
The bureau and provincial officials sent investigators, yielding 13
arrests.
Among those jailed was the former top county leader and managers of
the company, according to a press release from the bureau.
“We hope the national campaign will awe offenders and will further
raise national awareness of forest protection,” said Lei Jiafu, the
bureau’s deputy director. “These cases revealed that dereliction of
duties by local governments and wrongdoings by local enterprises
have become major cause of forest destruction.”
Fourteen supervisory groups have been dispatched throughout China
since earlier this year to preside over inquiries into such
cases.
China banned logging of natural forests since 1998 and allows
logging in commercial forests only under strict control, according
to the Forest Law.
The forest area in China totals 159 million hectares, covering 16.6
percent of the country’s total area.
(China Daily
07/31/2001)