Illegal Logging in the Philippines

What is Illegal Logging?

Illegal logging is the harvest, transportation, purchase or sale of timber in violation of national laws. The harvesting procedure itself may be illegal, including using corrupt means to gain access to forests; extraction without permission or from a protected area; the cutting of protected species; or the extraction of timber in excess of agreed limits.
Illegalities may also occur during transport, such as illegal processing and export; fraudulent declaration to customs; and the avoidance of taxes and other charges. Much destructive logging is however legal and that legal and illegal logging are often linked. Therefore addressing only illegally sourced timber is not sufficient.

Illegal Logging in the Philippines

Forest cover in the Philippines decreased from 34 percent in the 1970s to 22 percent in 1987.
The main causes of deforestation and land degradation are thought to include intensive logging over decades, upland migration, agricultural expansion, development policy failures, and inequitable land distribution.

Remaining forest cover is concentrated in Palawan, Mindanao and the uplands of Luzon. The last forest resource inventory in 1987 showed a forest cover of only 6.6 million hectares and now less than a million hectares are virgin forest. Many of the remaining areas are mountainous and at threat of soil erosion linked to local vegetation removal. Declining wood availability, heavy soil erosion and environmental disasters such as flooding led to logging bans on primary forests with concessions reduced and increasing reforestation efforts in the last few decades.

Comments:

On my point of view, illegal logging may have its advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages on illegal logging is that the illegal loggers earn money on cutting trees. They earn money so that they can buy some food and things for there families. Well thats the problem here in the Philippines. We are overpopulation that even some people who doesn't want to do such things must do such things to live. They are destroying our forest without knowing what will happened in the near future. They can earn money for now but do they know what will happened tomorrow?

Disadvatanges on illegal logging are effect on what illegal loggers do in the forest. First, they take away the homes of some animals in the forest. Imagine if someone destroy your homes, what will you going to do? If the loggers destroy every single forest here in the Philippines what we be left for the animals or even for us. Second, the major floods that hit us. Do you know why it hit us? It's because we do not have enough forest to block the water. The forest is our shield on major flood attack but look what happened. There are no forest to block for us.

Insights:

My insights is the if we don't stop illegal logging now, we don't know what will happened to us on the near future. For me its ok to cut down trees BUT only BIG trees. And after we cut the big trees down for our necessities we can replace them by planting trees. Nature for me is cause and effect. If we do some on nature and expect that nature will do something to us.

Reference: www.illegal-logging.info