On June 29th, a female forest officer was reportedly threatened with a firearm by a logger. Minister Habet explained that he received a report and attributes the threats to the Ministry cracking down on illegal logging. He told us that he already went to the Prime Minister and the Minister of Home Affairs for assistance to provide protection to the forest officers.
Orlando Habet, Minister of Sustainable Development
"I have gotten a verbal report from the forest officer and she had already received a call and threats to her life. This has all been because we have stepped up since last year October on the compliance side of the forest department where we're trying to see how we can curb and slow down and hopefully eliminate the illegal logging activities but also we had said that we put a moratorium on those yearly logging licenses because those are the licenses that we found out were really depleting our forests. We cannot totally eliminate those from the private sector so if you have 50 acres of land that you're going to clean half of it for agriculture then it is almost sacrilegious to say that you'll bulldoze it and burn it but not being able to use it so we gave what they call a private salvage license so you could at least make something out of it. But the illegal logging is a major problem but because we have been cracking down on it severely and I think now the threats are starting to come to the department because it has been the livelihood for some of these illegal loggers for many years but there hasn't been a program where we have targeted them and tried to stop it."
Reporter:
"Is there anything being done to be able to protect these forest officers even more because as you said, they are cracking down on these illegal activities?"
Orlando Habet, Minister of Sustainable Development
"Yes certainly I have had a conversation with the new minister responsible for the police, I also mentioned to the Prime Minister in the last cabinet meeting and he called the minister along with me and the former minister who was there, Mr. Kareem Musa, and we identified a unit which will be able to work along with the forest officers and so they will have to form a group sort of like a task force to be able to plan it that maybe mentioned that you're going on this venture to seek out the illegal loggers on a certain day at a certain time because you don't know if that information is going out and so when you get there there's nothing or they have already moved out the logs because they have been advised before time so it has to be planned but we have already spoken to the Prime Minister and the minister responsible for the police and they promised they would assist us with that unit."
And while we note that Forestry may be cracking down-7News is also in receipt of credible reports that there are multiple instances of shady business linked to Forestry Department staff and we are looking into those.
