Logging methods

[jim king]

I have a question and would like some experienced  advice.  I live and work in the Upper Amazon Basin of Peru in the lumber business.  We are in constant discussion as to what is the most ecologically sound method of logging.

We have the same international disease here as everywhere which is a general lack of working capital.  Our labor costs for loggers are $4.50 USD daily.

Here is the problem:  We have an unemployment rate of over 60% and the Peruvian Government in cooperation with the WWF and paid for by the US Govt. has implemented a forestry law that does not allow for individual loggers with a chain saw to enter the jungle , cut up a tree into cants and carry them out.  They say this is too destructive.

What they have approved is the use of skidders of which no one can afford and the building of thousands of miles of penetration roads for serious commercial logging.  My question is , does anyone have any data showing the impact of chainsaw logging and carrying out the cants on the backs of people vs the impact of skidders and road building ?  The average distance would be 3 to 5 miles .  I would assume this would be very similar to logging with horses vs skidders as to the impact.

We have two distinct needs here in the Amazon.  The first to create employment which chainsaw logging does and the second is to develop a timber industry in the Amazon.  The Amazon covers an area a bit larger than the US (several countries)  and produces an annual production of 2.4 times that of Oregon so as you can see we have a way to go to make a forestry industry  and would like ideas on how to do it best.

Thanks in advance for any input anyone may have.

Jim King
Iquitos, Peru

[sawguy21]

Welcome to the FF. You might be the first south american member.  8) The WWF and National Geographic would have us believe the Amazon basin is being raped and pillaged for subdivisions and farmland.

[beenthere]

Big welcome to the Forestry Forum.

I'm assuming the WWF is the World Wildlife Foundation.  ??  that correct? 

Unfortunate that you don't have knowledgable forestry type people involved in making the decisions, but also in the US, our National Forests are run too much by the unknowing enviro groups, of which I'd categorize the WWF along with the Sierra Club.

I've no answers, but appreciate your frustration. Seems like a no-brainer, but then what do practical people know.   :

[jim king]

Sawguy, Beenthere:  There indeed was some destruction of the Eastern edge of the Amazon years ago for resettlement of poor people from the cities to the Amazon to start a new life.  It was nothing like happened in the US or Europe during the development of those areas.  Being an ecologist is BIG business.  When you can convince people that the world is ending of course people generally all being good want to help.  The ecology groups come up with all the facts and figures to scare anyone.  The figures I have used about the production of the Amazon and Oregon are taken from the ecologists own scare letters and most likley inflated at that but the average person has no idea what a cubic meter of round wood is and gets nervous seeing supposedly scary facts.

My wife and I have lived in the Amazon going on 25 years and have not seen much activity of the ecologists.  They mainly hang near thier house , doing nothing but waiting for more money to come in to help thier personal life.

The attached news item from down river in Brazil about says it all.  Why are there 3600 non profit non tax paying foreign companies (NGO´S) in Manaus.  They are all living well and recieving tax free money from well meaning people in North Amaerica ansçd Europe.  Do you think a simalar size city in the States would allow this type of corruption by foreigners.
Believe me this is an endless subject.

Brazil Worried International NGO's Want to Take Over the Amazon    

Written by Newsroom    
Thursday, 18 May 2006
The 10th National Conference of State Legislatures, which began in Brazil Wednesday, May 17, and runs through Friday, May 19, will debate denunciations that the Amazon is being internationalized.
State deputies from various regions in Brazil and experts on the Amazon are gathered in Manaus, in the state of Amazonas, for the event, which is sponsored by the National Union of State Legislatures (UNALE).
At the end of the encounter, the participants intend to draft the Letter from Manaus, which will be delivered to the candidates in this year's presidential race.
During the conference the military commander of the Amazon region, general Cláudio Barbosa Figueiredo, will give a talk entitled "Amazônia - Patrimony of Brazil," in which he will warn of the foreign intervention risks the country faces.
According to UNALE president, José Távora, the choice of Manaus to host the conference was a strategic one for raising the issue of the risk of the region's internationalization.
"Among the wealth of topics of vital interest to state legislatures, we want to discuss the national security of one of the states with the greatest resource endowments in the country and question the purpose of the presence of 3,600 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the region," he affirmed.
ABr

[jim king]

Beenthere:  Yes I was talking about the Word Wildlife fund.  Here is one of thier web pages bragging about the absurdity of what they have done with the USAID  "US Agency for International Developement paying the way.   It all sounds good but it is not the way it is.

It is also interesting that they admit that the US Government forgave over Ten Million in USD in debt to the Peruvian government to accept the law.
A bribe like that from any private company would put the officers in jail as they would be in conflict with the "Foreign Corrupt Practices Act".

Long link shortened by tireless but understanding admin

[Gary_C]

Welcome to the forum.

Here in the US, they are trying to stop building roads and stop using mechanical equipment. What you say they are doing just doesn't make sense. But those groups trying to save the environment have never made much sense to me.

I suspect the World Bank is involved and is supposed to be trying to build up your forest industry capitalization in an environmentally friendly way. That way they can control the logging and "save the rain forest" all at the same time.

I doubt there is any way to stop or change something like this after they have the control you are describing. Do not know what to tell you now.   :(

[jim king]

Gary:  As far as we know of the World Bank has nothing to do with this but they are doing a great job of throwing away money on other projects.

I believe we can do something about this law as it was made out of absolute ignorance and corruption not to mention it is absurd.  With the help of this new law we have now gone from an estimated 50% illegal logging to 95% .

Now I will explain a small part of what constitutes "Illegal Logging"
1:  Cutting any tree or shrub on your own land without permission from the Government. 
2:  Chainsaws must be registered the same as a dangerous weapon and of course most are not.
3:  Well over 90% of the forestry consessions allococated by the WWF/USAID program are several miles from any river and millions of BF of trees must be cut to build thousands of miles of roads. This is a very diverse forest and the majority of the trees are of no commercial value and many still have no names.  The road building project alone would be the biggest deforestation project in the history of the Amazon if completed.  A forest road here must have at least 100 feet of width to permit the sun and breeze to enter or it becomes unusable in days and another must be built.  We have only one 60 mile road that leaves town , we are the biggest town in the world with no road access.  We are 2500 miles up the Amazon and a seaport for ocean going vessels 10 months a year.
4:  No wood can be transported from the jungle to town for processing without govt permission.
5:  No wood can be exported without approximatley 2 pounds of other permits and stamps.
6:  I can go on and on and am thinking about making a web page on this but just havent had the time.
7:  As the Dept of Natural Resources here only knows about 30 species of the thousands woods , species such as Rosewood are classified as firewood and can only be burned for firewood or charcoal as the Scientific names are not on any list of species that exist here and approve for lumber.
8: As I said earlier I could go on for days, if Americans had forestry laws as we have here there would be a revolution.  The last time I was in Miami I stayed in a friends house in a new developement where they are removing the Everglades.  One evening we were out walking the dogs and I found it quite interesting that on the bumpers and back windows of most of those SUV,s were WWF and all the other IN groups stickers.  Do as I say and not as I do is the motto.
9:  I just about forgot one of the basic problems, a forestry permit to cut a tree on your own land costs $300 minimum.  Now, given that the average "family" has an income of $22 A MONTH do you really think they can ever be legal.

 I just wish someone would start an NGO to check out NGO,s and a lot of people would save a lot of money and the world would be a better place and a lot less corrupt.

.

[jon12345]

What laws do they have pertaining to road building?  Could you disquise forestry operations as 'road building' ???   Don't let me corrupt ya  :D

[Tom]

I would think that there must be some organization to the logging of an area that is not personal property.  by the same token, I think that a good argument could be made by any Forester for the use of animals to skid trees.  The important thing is that they use defined skid ways and minimal disruption.  Horse logging and Oxen have been used in the USA to accomplish "light" logging, logging without tearing up the ground.

It sounds to me that the first ones to begin studying the jungle will be the first ones to be able to harvest it.

Perhaps the Government must stop it all just to get an organized procedure started. I don't know. To eliminate all logging isn't good for anything or anybody.

The NGS is one of the liberal organizations that that is against everything.  To get them on your side is wasting your breath.

[crtreedude]

Well, living under the rules that you are talking about - I can tell you I approve of them. We in Costa Rica have to abide by them.

I am no fan of WWF since they were part of one of the biggest Teak scams down here (search on teak, WWF, Costa Rica - I am sure you will find it).

Until these rules were imposed in Costa Rica, the deforestation was incredible. Costa Rica only has 27% of its forest left. Just so you know, we are involved in plantations.

Educating your average campesino that they can't just cut down any tree is a challenge. Registering all sawmills is so that if someone is cutting wood WITHOUT permits, there is something worse than a fine - it is the loss of your tool.

There is something called "The Tragedy of the Commons" - it goes like this. When there is a common resource, everyone takes as much as they can, as quick as they can when they see that it is running out.  They assume, rightly, that if they don't, someone else will.

Choke holds like this become a necessary evil so that the cutting of wood can be controlled.  The problem with allowing anyone with a chainsaw to be loose is that they will then be able to afford more kids - with more kids, more chainsaws, within a few generations - there will be nothing and people will be screaming about people starving because they no longer can cut wood.

The most valuable trees in the rainforest are often medicinal also (I could give you examples) - these produce food too for the animals. A good example is Ojoche - great food tree, great wildlife tree, great wood. Almost doesn't exist anymore. Tamarindo is another one. Sapote is another - almendro is another (and the loss of it is nearly dooming to extinction the Great Green McCaw)

What most people don't know about tropical forest is that animals tend to be specific to a particular tree - remove a tree, cause the extinction of a bird or animal.

just my dos colones

[jim king]

Jon12345:   You have hit it on the head what as to what is happening.  We have companies offering to build roads for the Government free for the timber they take down. 

Tom:  I can assure you there is no logical plan behind any of this. Just a bunch of politicians and groups like the WWF out of control.

Crtreedude:   We don´t have the plantation scams here as there is no bare spots to reforest.   I do have to disagree with you on a couple of things.  I believe that a law has to be useable by the people and not a law that is impossible for the people to live with or you end up with everyone working as normal but just paying part of their income to the public officials to get legal documents.  The new law has made corruption rampant when I thought it could not get any worse.

The biggest problem we have in the Amazon is the population explosion as you mentioned.  The difference in our thinking is that I believe that the way to stop the population crises is thru income and education and that will not happen without work.  Here as in most countries the more money the people have and the better the standard of living the less children.  Here our problem is that no one has figured out how to teach them how to live without eating and the forest is the only way to earn money.  I can assure you that a guy with hungry screaming kids doesn't pay attention to any law .

[Phorester]

Unfortunately when a law is passed by govt. it is rarely overturned.  Govt. bureaucrats love that power.  You will probably have to work with that law forever.

Tom has a good idea with animal logging.  How is "skidder" defined in the law?  Can it be an animal?  This is a drop in the bucket, but may help.

Once again a so-called "environmental" group has got their foot in the door first - the WWF.  They have more money than any pro-forestry group, if any actually exist.  Once again it appears that good ecosystem management by professional foresters gets left by the side of the new logging roads. 

A question for anybody familiar with forest managment in south America, just how is this rainforest actually being managed?  Are there professional tropical foresters giving input?

[crtreedude]

Jim,

I don't disagree with you by much - but the issue is that as long as people without education are making money by extracting resources from a public pool - they will continue doing so until there is nothing left.

Japan is a place that instituted very strick rules on the forest - they still have them now. Dominican Republic - the same - the other side of the island is completely deforested, and the people are in deep poverty.

No controls means that the crash will be hard - controls means that it will land a little softer. Yes, I am very aware it doesn't completely work - but it helps slow it down and if implemented sanely, it is enforced slowly.

A very good book on this is "Collapse" by Jared Diamond. It discusses what caused the collapse of several civilizations - well worth the time to read.

[jim king]

Phorester: I live and work in the Peruvian Amazon.  Here the local foresters would have a hard time identifying 25 species of the thousands that exist.  We have the largest Species  ID program ongoing in Peru and help the local DNR with Id of species.  Neither the local industry or local  foresters had anything to do with the new law.  It was all done by people whom have never set foot in the jungle.  I can only speak about Peru but I assume most countries are the same.

[crtreedude]

It has been my experience that most forestry engineers here can identify easily about 50+ species - I can and I am not a forestry engineer (plantation owner)

But, Costa Rica has a very good education system.

There are about 25 common plantation trees - and over 2,000 different tropical trees.

Unfortunately, laws come from cities - not from the jungle.

[jim king]

I am not a forester either but got into the wood business about 25 years ago here in the Amazon.  We work with the U of SC as shown below and they inturn with the USDA Tropical Lab in Wisconsin.  It says a lot when two foreigners living in  different tropical countries know more about the jungle than the locals.  Education is the key.  Our website is very out of date but you can see a little about what we do.   www.exoticwoodworld.com

WOOD ID PROGRAM
Vision y Mission of the project by Mihaly Czako , Ph.D. Advisor to AR&R SAC, and Exotic Wood World.

   The Laboratorio para la Identificación de Maderas Amazonicas is a privately funded project of the Amazon Resort & Reserve and Exotic Wood World whose proprietor has a vision of cataloging of trees and other woody plants of Amazonian Peru. In the Iquitos area the trees are poorly known and expertise is scarce in tree identification in the field and especially at the level of wood. AR&R salvages wood from sustenance charcoal operations and from river bottoms. The wood that would otherwise be burnt or rotted is utilized for making furniture, artwork, and some quantity is exported as lumber and turning blanks. A longer term and complementary vision is to provide a knowledge base for reforestation of the scars of the jungle and to provide agricultural alternatives to charcoal production.
The Laboratorio para la Identificación de Maderas Amazonicas is committed to proper collection of wood with botanical vouchers. This is practiced on a very limited scale compared to the size and diversity of Peruvian flora and is apparently nonexistent in our area. It is complicated by logistic difficulties due to the swampy terrain and necessity for the collector to be present at the often remote and difficult locations, sometimes in inclement weather and in the company of parasites and other injurious wildlife. Further complication in proper botanical collection of woody lianas and trees is the necessity of searching and inspection of the entire crown of the fallen tree, which may be tangled and its exploration often puts the collector in a precarious position, for flowers, fruits, which are often found in only small quantities and sometimes in unexpected places such as branches of cauliflorous species. In order to properly ID a new tree species one must first of all have quite some patience in the fieldwork.  It is necessary to wait for flowers and seeds or fruits in addition to the leaves, wood and bark. There is no standard flowering season and some do not flower every year. Something as simple a taking a GPS reading can take hours to clear a line through the forest canopy to the satellites.
   The manager of the laboratory is Mercedes Galo Guerra. The laboratory houses a herbarium, a photo lab, wood specimen storage, and bench space for chemical fingerprinting. The herbarium and wood specimen collection currently holds more than 120 species. The primary collectors are Mercedes Galo Guerra and Dr. Mihaly Czako (The University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, USA), visiting scientist. Each species is represented by at least one sheet and as many as 1-4 duplicates of pressed branches with leaves, often accompanied by fruits or flowers of both if available at the time of collection. Repeated collections from the same tree in different phenological states are not combined but treated as separate sheets. Delicate flowers and parts are also preserved in 20% glycerine with thymol.
   The data collected includes information on the field site and the plant itself. Field site data include date, time, municipality if applicable, specific locality landmarks, GPS where signals were available, accuracy, elevation. Plant data include, a collection number unique to the primary collector, collectors' names, taxon (scientific name), photos with frame numbers, habit, height, branching, diameter at breast height is determined, anything that is not apparent from the collected material, phenology (whether the plant is in flower or fruit, dormancy or flushing new leaves), colors of vegetative and flower parts, unusual vegetative parts, color of slash and sap, physical habitat, substrate, slope, aspect of slope, exposure to light, community, vegetation type, person who identified taxon and date, source (flora work), accession number once specimen is mounted. Further detailed observations and measurements are on the collected materials while fresh in laboratory before pressing in order to document features that are lost or altered during the preservative process, features that are may be essential for field identification. The color of the wood many times will change in minutes or hours. The collected fresh material is also photographed in detail, including microphotography of select features.
Corresponding specimens of bark and wood are maintained in the collection. A chemical analysis is made on each species by extracting the chemicals from heartwood and other parts if necessary and to produce a chemical fingerprint, which is recorded. The authentic wood specimens will be used for studying properties of wood, as etalons for identification for research and commercialization.
   Select germplasm is maintained as seed, seedlings or transplanted individuals. Select seeds are stored and experiments are conducted to determine viability and best storage. A small nursery is used for testing viability and for documentation of seedling morphology, and other juvenile developmental stages, as well as for documentation of the morphology of developing twigs and leaves. Tracts of land are set aside for long term botanical study and conservation of biodiversity.
   The laboratory and herbarium is equipped with a PC, printer, scanner, backup storage, data security software, digital camera with microscope attachment, lighting and photographic chamber, plant presses, storage area and shelving for specimens, bench space, thin layer chromatography, handheld UV and observation chamber, safety equipment. The library contains select books and photocopies on relevant floras and botanical papers, all cataloged by searchable bibliography manager software (EndNote).
   Proper identification of the wood thus serves multiple purposes. It adds to the body of botanical, dendrological, and ecological knowledge, informs the department of natural resources about the dendrological resources and provides quality control by correctly labeling the product thus facilitating informed decisions on biodiversity protection and export permits. There are indications that species new to the regional flora, some new even to science are represented in the collection.
A new species is named by a bona fide specialist, a botanist. This person will be the "author" of that species. It is not prudent to name a species based on a single specimen; it is necessary to locate several individuals, either in the field or in herbarium collections, because a species is supposed to be a population of individuals. The new species is published in an article in a peer-reviewed journal. This way the information is made public and available for independent experts worldwide to verify or refute. While the decision that a particular type of plant is a new species is at the discretion of the author, there are a host of rules for the creation of the name, grammatical, semantic, and common sense rules such as not repeating an existing name. The existing species names and their synonymies can be accessed at http://www.ipni.org/index.html.

Objectives and Outputs
•   To properly collect and accurately identify tree species utilized by local farmers and artisans or identified otherwise as economically useful and maintain a vouchered specimen collection, which may distribute specimens to bona fide specialists
•   To describe and report on species new to the region and/or to science
•   To prepare a database and identification guides for the field and for specimens.
•   To train technicians and students in taxonomy, field collection and identification skills, specimen curation and databasing techniques.
•   To develop seed collection, storage, and agroforestry cultivation practices.
•   To disseminate knowledge of Amazonian forest biodiversity locally and nationally.



   A similar effort was funded at Universidad Agraria Nacional La Molina by the Kew Garden's Darwin Initiative (http://www.rbge.org.uk/rbge/web/science/research/biodiversity/perueng.jsp). Our ongoing activities were observed and verbally acclaimed by the Fondebosque, and the past president of Universidad Agraria Nacional La Molina, who commented that laboratory at AR&R has made a significant contribution to identification of Peruvian wood.


Mihaly Czako, Ph.D.
Senior Research Associate
Department of Biological Sciences
University of South Carolina
700 Sumter St.
Columbia, SC 29208, U.S.A.
tel (803)777-8928
fax (803)777-4002
http://www.biol.sc.edu/~czako/Czako.htm
email: czako@mail.biol.sc.edu

[crtreedude]

Looks like pretty interesting stuff.

One thing that I have noticed is that there is a difference between forestry engineers, who tend to be focused on trees as plantations, and those who try to understand the forest.

Which I could find the time for a road trip!

[rebocardo]

> allow for individual loggers with a chain saw to enter the jungle , cut up a tree into cants
>  and carry them out.  They say this is too destructive.
> What they have approved is the use of skidders

They are lying.

It is a matter of control. Once everyone is banned from the public forest the public owns, then they will ban roads and heavy equipment because then they can surely show that causes  extensive damage. Then noone cuts down trees.

imo, They do not want anyone to benefit from their own forests.

[Ianab]

Whats the policy on portable sawmills being hauled into the forest?

I would think that would have to be a lot less destructive than making large roads and skidding out big logs. With enough manpower (which you have) you can get a swingblade mill almost anywhere and it's timber recovery from a log is just as good as a larger fixed mill.

Cheers

Ian

[jim king]

Rebocardo:  What you say could have very well been the idea behind this whole mess but it finally apprears that the industry is getting organized to put up a fight.

Ianab:  Portable mills are allowed in the jungle but the problem is that the tropical jungle is very diverse in its species and nothing grows in groves like in the temperate climate.  It is not unusual to have 100 species per acre.  With this the problem is getting a handful of very scattered species to the portable mill or move the mill for each small log.

[crtreedude]

You are exactly right - access to selected trees is hard. Moving the mill through a jungle is very, very difficult.

[Ianab]

Yup.. I understand

Our local forest isn't tropical, but it is rainforest, with all the vines, fallen logs and assorted undergrowth  :  So I guess that takes you back to needing to go in with an excavator or bulldozer and make trails. Once you have done that you may as well skid the log back to a landing. Not exactly low impact.

Also I'm thinking about some of the techniques used here 100 or so years ago. Bullock teams, bush tramways and steam donkey winches. Are any of those methods able to be updated to modern equipment / technology?







And things like this..



The horse powered capstan winch could drag in large logs from a mile away 

Cheers

Ian

[jim king]

Even tho the theme moved from where it started I think it may have ended up benificial if for nothing more than a bit of information from the other part of the world.  I think people can see that logging will never endanger the Amazon but the old land clearing days of Brazils frontier were not good.  Today the biggest task at hand is putting the most people possible to work in the smallest area possible and that is with selective logging and value added products to create income on a local level.  Still as of today the indigionas methods of slash and burn and firewood and charcoal production are far and away the biggest danger.

[SwampDonkey]

Member Fabiola is a Forest Engineer student from Brazil.

[Ron Wenrich]

I believe your original question was about which had the greater impact - chainsaw logging or skidder logging.  A rule of thumb for logging here in our parts is that roads will take 5% of the area.  You will get a considerable amount of soil compaction that will take decades to heal.  And when you put in roads, then you open up avenues for more settlement, and slash and burn.

I would say that your chainsaw logging would have the least amount of environmental impact.   

The problem I see is that your production would be too low to make you very cost competitive.  Although you are giving more people work, the wage would be low.  You would be spreading the same amount of money over a larger population.

What sort of pack animals do you have access to?  Animals should be able to take a lot more out than a man, and be able to do it cheaper.  That allows for a higher wage, since production is higher.  Environmental impact would still be less than a skidder. 

Your value added is your ticket to better employment.