If they can do it on China, we can do it here!!
End Commercial  Logging Now!

Jane Clark
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Title:    China lumberjacks to become tree-planters
Source:   Reuters
Date:     September 4, 1998

BEIJING, Sept 4 (Reuters) - China will order its army of
lumberjacks to lay down their axes and plant trees, the Xinhua
news agency said on Friday amid mounting official concern over how
rampant logging has worsened deadly flooding this year.

The State Forestry Administration had drawn up a 19.5 billion yuan
($2.3 billion) plan to stop logging along the Yangtze and Yellow
rivers and in the northeast and to start large-scale
reforestation, Xinhua said.

``With the implementation of this forest-conservation project,
over one million people now employed by the forestry industry
will lose their present jobs by 2000,'' it said.

``Most of those laid off will have new jobs as tree planters,
forest tenders and other related work,'' it quoted Li Yucai, the
administration's deputy director, as saying.

The plan, to start this year, calls for a halt to logging by 65
lumber companies and a cut in timber production of 10 million
cubic metres (353 million cubic feet) by 70 other companies, it
said.

The plan aimed to better protect ancient forests and shift China's
timber production to new forests by 2010, it said.

Although China's forests covered 87.26 million hectares (215.6
million acres), or nine percent of its territory, unchecked
logging threatened to wipe out all its forests within 10 years, it
quoted one expert as saying. Authorities have increasingly
acknowledged the role of logging along China's major waterways
in devastating floods, which have killed more than 3,000 people
and caused at least 166 billion yuan in damage this year.

``The devastating floods in China this summer are due, at least in
part, to deforestation and the serious damage it has done to
vegetation along the upper reaches of the Yangtze and other
rivers,'' Xinhua said.

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