Dear Editor,
John Willems’ letter ‘Greenheart is in no danger of extinction’ (Sunday Stabroek, June 14) misses the points raised in my letter ‘Guyana’s iconic timber species over-harvested, under-priced’ (SN, April 30, 2015) and the subsequent news item ‘Iconic timber species over-harvested, near commercial extinction’ (Sunday Stabroek, May 31). Mr Willems refers to a study of greenheart ‘reefs’ which are natural concentrations of some tree species on particular combinations of soil texture and drainage. That study reported by Colin Clarke in 1956 was for forests still harvested by axe and handsaw and ‘grey-stick’ manual log-hauling. By the early 1970s, Guyanese loggers had converted almost completely to felling by chainsaws and mechanical extraction, with consequently much greater damage to the remaining trees, saplings and seedlings.
So the counts of residual trees and seedlings by Colin Clarke are not relevant to my points about commercial extinction. Commercial extinction is the condition when
- remaining specimens of a living species are too small in size, too defective, too expensive to be worth harvesting;
- too expensive – remote location, few harvestable specimens per location, restrictions on harvest – control by Indigenous Peoples, control by Environmental Non-Government Organisations or by law for biodiversity conservation (High Conservation Values, High Carbon Stocks, Intact Forest Landscapes);
- but able to recover biologically if enough mother trees and suitable environment for seedlings are present in a specific location.
In addition, the selective over-harvesting which focuses on a very few kinds of timbers and removes most or all the adult trees of those timbers interferes with the natural regeneration of the forest as a whole. The remaining trees are not old enough to produce a continuous flow of fresh fertile seed; and the trees are too far apart or are too difficult for the flower pollinators or seed dispersers to find, so the species fails to reproduce and commercial extinction soon becomes biological extinction. Underfed Asian loggers who hunt the seed dispersers (such as labba) for human food contribute to the degradation of the forest.
Mr Willems also overlooks the points that selective over-harvesting is contrary to the GFC’s codes of practice and to the national forest policy as endorsed by the National Assembly. If a logger with a Timber Sales Agreement cannot find markets for the timbers on his GFC-provided logging concession, why is he still holding that concession? That is contrary to one of the explicit conditions of the licence.
Yours faithfully,
Janette Bulkan