Logging gets the chop in northeast forests to help restore ecosystems
Print Edition
FORESTRY authorities yesterday banned commercial logging in two major forests in the extreme northeast of the country in a bid to restore the ecosystem.
The move ended more than half a century of logging in the Greater and Lesser Hinggan Mountains.
As China’s largest forest area, the two could help control climate change and conserve water and soil. They also nurture a tenth of China’s arable land and are sources of major rivers, including the Nenjiang River and Heilongjiang River.
In the 1950s, China started large-scale logging in virgin forests to meet the demands of economic development.
“At that time, the country needed timber for its development and we believed in the notion that the more trees you chopped down, the greater contribution you made to the nation,” said An Changlu, who became a forest worker in the 1970s.
In order to meet logging quotas, workers felled trees in campaigns conducted as if waging wars — even lighting fires at night so that they could load timber onto trucks in the darkness, An remembered.
In more than half a century, the two forestry companies there extracted more than 600 million cubic meters of timber, according to official statistics.
Excessive logging was taking its toll by the early 1980s, with many people blaming the loss of forest cover for droughts and floods.
And mature trees soon became scarce. Veteran timber worker Wang Yude said trucks used to be filled by little more than 10 logs, but more recently 100 logs have been needed to fully load a truck.
“There are no longer any big trees. The winds in the Greater Hinggan Mountains are becoming stronger and the woods can no longer retain water,” said Liu Zhanjun, a worker with Qianshao Forestry Station.
“In the past, it rained for days before water levels in rivers would rise. Now the river water levels can rise substantially following just one rainstorm,” said Liu.
The forests have retreated 100 kilometers, according to official data.
In 1998, the Chinese government started to invest some 100 billion yuan (US$16.1 billion) to protect the remaining forest and returning cultivated land to forest or pasture, before deciding to ban logging.
Many forestry workers acknowledge the need for logging to stop.
One asked: “If the logging is not stopped now, what will be left for the future generations?”
However, with the ban on commercial logging, tens of thousands of local forestry workers will have to switch to new positions as forestry rangers or could be laid off.
Xiao Dejun, head of Dawusu forestry station in the Greater Hinggan Mountains, said a third of forestry workers are on low incomes, rely on subsistence allowances and cannot even afford coal for home heating.
Xiao asked: “They burn wood for heating, so what will they do in future after the complete logging ban?”
Central government has earmarked 2.35 billion yuan (US$379 million) each year up to 2020 to help support local workers.
A blueprint for the protection of the Greater and Lesser Hinggan Mountains in 2010 set a target of increasing the forests by 1.7 million hectares over the next decade.
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