logging

Belem, December, 1999 -- Using ultra-violet technology, Greenpeace activists yesterday identified an illegal supply of logs in the yard of Eidai do Brasil, a Japanese export logging company, in Icoaraci Municipality of Para State, Brazil.

Officials from Brazil's environment agency, IBAMA, subsequently fined the company and confiscated the logs. The action was a result of the environmental group's investigation of Para's timber industry, lasting over a month and covering more than 4,000 km.

An international report published today (4/10/99) names the major 150 companies involved in the logging of ancient forests around the world. The report - 'Buying Destruction' - compiled by Greenpeace, profiles major logging and wood trading companies active in the ancient forests of Brazil, Guyana, Chile and Suriname, Cameroon and Gabon, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Canada and Russia.

Sao Paulo, 21 September 1999 - Greenpeace welcomed the decision by the Brazilian President, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, to approve the regulation of the Environmental Crimes Law but demanded the government to take all the necessary efforts to enforce the Law.

"The regulation will have strong impacts on illegal logging activities in the Amazon," said Paulo Adario, Greenpeace Amazon Campaigner.

Brasilia, 17 September 1999 - Greenpeace launched today a campaign to pressure the Minister of the Civil House, Pedro Parente, to implement the Environmental Crimes Law that was approved in 1998 but has not been regulated.

"While the Brazilian Government discusses the regulation of the Law the environment is being damaged, as the recent apprehensions of illegal timber and the forest fires show. Currently, there is no way to properly punish the environmental criminals", says Roberto Kishinami of Greenpeace in Brazil.