Word: timber
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When rains slowed enough for people living in the central coast of Vietnam to venture outside and assess the damage, they were stunned at what they saw. In the night, Typhoon Ketsana had unleashed thousands of logs and cut timber, which had ridden the swollen rivers down the mountains, bashing anything and everything in the way. The lumber, much of which is believed to have been illegally harvested old-growth timber, clogged rivers and jammed under bridges and piers. For residents in the area who managed to harvest the wood, the rains last month brought riches. But Typhoon Ketsana also...
...washed-up wood, says Lam, is evidence of the shrinking old-growth forest cover - a loss that has contributed to erosion and frequent flooding in the province. He blames "logging pirates," illegal timber smugglers who are becoming increasingly bold - and even dangerous. But, Lam added, many trees are also being felled legally to make way for hydroelectric plants and resettlement projects up in the mountains. This week, the Forestry Protection Department at the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development ordered the provinces to determine how much of the wood washed downriver by Ketsana was illegally cut and how much...
...residents converged on the logjam at the Quang Hue bridge, he says. Despite the churning currents, people waded in to salvage the wood. Groups of men carried trees into town and sold them that same day. "Some even brought power saws to the site and cut the logs into timber like a carpenter's shop, selling it on the spot," says Dong. "There were so many people that the police and forest rangers couldn't stop them...
...timber is big business in Vietnam, where demand for exotic wood products in Europe and the U.S. has been driving illegal logging for years. Furniture manufacturing and wood processing earned Vietnam $2.8 billion last year, making it one of the largest hard-currency earners in the country. Loggers have become so brazen that they are even going after the rare Dalbergia tonkinesis trees planted on the streets of Vietnam's capital, chopping them down in the middle of the night and selling them to traders...
...traffic jam at Yellowstone knows what I'm talking about. But these are good democratic problems to have. The worst thing would be apathy. Then our rapacious nature would come in--and that's the part that looks at a stream and thinks, Dam, looks at a stand of timber and thinks, Board feet. And then we would lose them...