- Michael SloleyWardens and foresters of the Portland Forestry Department work to secure 126 planks of teak which were illegally cut down in the Cambridge backlands area of the Friendship Hall Reserves.
Claude Mills, Staff Reporter
A RAID by the Portland arm of the Forestry Department last week netted more than 3,600 board feet of prized teak lumber which had been illegally cut down in Friendship Hall Reserves in west Portland.
The street value of the haul was more than $500,000. The operation used eight men to bundle 126 planks into a waiting truck.
The operation struck a heartening blow for the seeming overwhelmed staff of the Forestry Department who are fighting a tough battle to save the nation's forests.
The Sunday Gleaner news team travelled to west Portland to watch an assembled environmental squad remove the confiscated lumber from the hostile backwoods to a place of safekeeping.
Decimated
The team observed a vast area of blackened stumps of once-beautiful mahogany trees razed by indiscriminate burning, ravines with decapitated mahoes, pine logs with the sap still oozing from their trunks, and denuded landscapes - evidence of rampant soil erosion.
In the backlands of the Friendship Hall Forest Reserves, entire stands of local mahogany and mahoe trees have been decimated by illegal loggers.
According to Danny Simpson, supervisor of the Forestry Department, the problem began when the Lands Department allowed FIDCO to come in during the early 1990s to harvest mature trees which were felled during Hurricane Gilbert.
"Then a decision was made to give the lower sections of the backlands to the coffee board to cultivate. But the coffee farmers have now abandoned the land. So the Lands Depart-ment ought to look at giving the lands over to reforestation," he said.
"Even though as you see this area is really inaccessible, this teak was planted over 40 years ago, but the motive for profit trumps all that. (Illegal loggers) will go anywhere to make a buck," Mr. Simpson said.
"We aren't afraid, but we couldn't go any further into the woods, we suspect that they are still cutting teak, but this (operation) should cramp them for the Christmas," Mr. Simpson said.
Biggest fine
Earlier this year, a 32-year-old farmer, Raphael Richards of Carr Hill, Rock Hall, St. Andrew, was fined $50,000 after he pleaded guilty to illegal logging and trespassing on the protected watershed lands of the National Water Commission (NWC).
"That was our biggest fine to date," Rainee Oliphant, legal officer of the Forestry Department, admitted.
But the tide is changing. There are illegal logging cases pending in the courts, and the judges, and lawyers are growing more environmentally savvy.
"We plan to approach the judiciary and the police to brief them on our existing legislation, the Forest Act once we get it passed, so they can know that this act exists and what it entails in terms of penalities which allows up to $500,000 fines in some cases."
