According to environmental reports, trees in many Ugandan forests are cut down at a higher rate than they are planted to feed the timber industry, a practice that poses a serious threat to the environment

If Semei Kakungulu and a score of others, who dedicated their lives to planting trees would raise from their graves and tour the places where they planted them, they would be shocked to find open lands that they had thought would be forests in the future.

In their days - the 1890s, it is estimated by the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) that Uganda had 10.8million hectares covered by forests but in just half a century, five million hectares have been destroyed, mainly by the timber industry which is a recent but rapidly growing sector affecting the environment.

In 1998, due to gradual environmental degradation, the climate suffered a setback - recording the warmest year since 1860, and the global temperature was about 0.6 degrees (centigrade) higher than that of 1990, according to the National Environment Management Authority (NEMA) State of Environment (SOE) 2002 report.

Then followed the enlargement of the gap in the ozone layer - a layer that protects the Earth from direct harmful rays (ultraviolet-B radiation) from the sun, which in September 2000 was recorded as the deepest and largest according to United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

This is different from how things were in the 1940s. "Then, Uganda's forestry management was the best in Africa and in the 60s, Uganda was a model state of the commonwealth," says Gaster Kiyingi, the public relations manager, National Forestry Authority (NFA).

Kiyingi says the problems in Uganda started in 1972 when management of forests suffered moral decay. He adds that the foresters were not trusted to an extent that a person who worked in a forest was branded a thief.

READY FOR SALE: Many forests are losing many of their trees to timber traders and dealers who will break the law and do anything else including working at night to get as much timber as they can. Net photo

Nevertheless, the timber business was very profitable for those who engaged in it. Unknown to them, their actions were posing an environmental concern to reckon with, with the forests quickly facing extinction.

The government was then compelled to do something. It revised the policies and laws governing forests and set up a new "faithful" independent department to foresee the preservation of the few remaining forests.

In 2000, the government realised that the forest department and policies weren't strict enough yet environmental degradation was at a climax. This was partly because the department was found to be too corrupt. A 1999 report by Falken Berg and Sepp estimated that only three percent of all potential revenue from wood utilisation of the forest sector was collected in 1998.

The parliamentary national resource in 2003 also discovered anomalies in the issuance of permits and licenses for timber businesses.

Implications

Most of the forests assessed were found to have lost a lot of valuable tree species and Uganda has since exceeded its annual acceptable cut from the natural forests.

Forests like Mabira - the biggest forest in Uganda lost 7,000 hectares of the total 29,570 hectares. So did Mayuge, now a district, which lost 76 percent of its forest-covered land, according to the NEMA SOE 2002 report. Kiyingi says, "All districts are affected by the encroachment and the long distance walked to collect firewood is a good indicator of that."

According to Solomon Musoke, the environment officer and gazetted environmental inspector of Mukono district, the rate at which trees are cut in Mukono district is higher than that at which they are planted, which presents a big problem to the agricultural sector and the environment.

"Many trees have been cut for timber and are almost finished from this district, so these people are going to Buvuma Islands where there are still some unexploited forests," he says. He adds that the rainfall pattern has changed for the worst and he blames this on the booming timber industry.

"There is already high crop failure in the districts that have lost forests to timber and people near the shores are experiencing strong wind currents because the tall trees that acted as wind breakers have been cut," he says.

Although the new policies banned the use of power saw machines in the harvesting of trees (cutting down and getting pieces of timber out of the tree) with the purpose of reducing productivity and the rate at which trees are cut by the lumberjacks, they are still being used in many areas.

The other reason for the banning of power saws was their waste of valuable timber - more than an inch of the timber is wasted when the saw is slicing the log, meaning that a log that would produce 100 pieces of timber will only produce half the number.

The manual method of harvesting trees has helped slow down the exploitation process.

According to lumberjacks, it takes six of them a month to harvest a fully-grown mvule tree yet it takes just three days if done by a power saw. Probably, the implementation of the policies has led to the skyrocketing of the prices on the market. Kiyingi says, "Last year, the supply had exceeded demand, and one cubic metre of pine wood was at Shs28,000 but after the enforcement of the policies, the price rose to Shs78,000." Prices for other species like mvule and mahogany rose as well.

The control has also knocked off small-scale timber traders who acted as middlemen, leaving the business to the rich timber dealers owning the forested land. Although NFA is happy about the high prices - indicating control of illegal timber trade, rural timber dealers are also jubilating, saying that it is worth risking dealing in illegal timber.

The timber industry is highly profitable that a few pieces of timber can make a big impact on a dealer's income.

For instance, a fully grown mvule tree can yield 100 pieces of 14 feet-12 by one inch is sold at Shs100,000 in the rural areas, while they make Shs2m and more on the urban market, yet total expense of harvesting illegally with a power saw is only Shs650,000.

Taking advantage

The illegal timber dealers are smart in that they start working at night when the authorities are out of the forests, using steamers to light the area they are working in.

While some are busy cutting down trees, others are sent to the hilltops and centres to look out for any incoming vehicles or person who may frustrate their trade. They then load the timber onto the lorries, place it below the lorry cabins and cover it with firewood or sand.

Unfortunately, they (illegal dealers) are too willing to use some of the gross profits of these proceedings to corrupt any enforcing authority (who are poorly paid) that they may meet them along the way. At the market, the dealers have resorted to keeping timber in their backyards, selling only to "faithful consumers".

Besides illegal dealers outnumbering the enforcers, they also beat them in facilities. Communication has been greatly improved with many roads and other methods they use to know of the existence of the officials. Yet many, if not all, district foresters have no transportation to protect the scattered forests, which are under private ownership and those that cover thick and wide areas, which they are mandated by law to protect.

Even NFA and Wildlife Authority do not have enough vehicles to assist them when patrolling the few forests (30 percent), which they are mandated to protect. When the foresters are in the area, the illegal dealers lie low and only come back when the overburdened staff go to other badly affected areas. They are also obliged to park government vehicles before dusk in accordance with the government orders yet the illegal operators' busiest time is at night.

Worse still, 2.7 million people live near the forest reserves while an estimated 900,000 people work in forests. And with the poor state of the agricultural cash crop sector, the neighbouring population that is pinched by poverty, resorts to getting quick money by cutting trees in the reserve forests that are protected by few guards.

Even the initiative of agricultural diversification has helped little because the encroachers of the forests are not residents so the policies don't affect them directly.

What's being done

However, the foresters have collaborated with different law enforcement organisations like the Special Revenue Protection Service and Police, to arrest illegal dealers and confiscate timber illegally traded. That is why the prices have increased.

Weary of the consequences that may come out of the great loss of forests, they are starting tree-planting campaigns where the foresters pay half of the costs for a person willing to plant a forest. For instance, Mukono is to plant 1 million trees.

NFA has also embarked on a similar promotion of planting trees on more than 25 hectares.