The high level FDA team currently taking county-wide assessment tour has discovered huge piles of abandoned logs in Greenville City, Sinoe County.
The team has vowed to take appropriate steps against those who harvested the logs but recklessly chose to abandon them to decay.
Annoyed over the discovery of those piles of abandoned logs, the FDA Managing Director, Rudolph Merab, who is leading the team said, “Our treasure should not be our curse.”
He told reporters that economically it makes no sense to harvest logs for business purposes only to let them decay.
He noted that FDA under his watch will be practically robust in effectuating the law governing the forest indicating, “We will ensure that the right things are done in the interest of the government and the communities as a whole.”
The abandoned logs were found mostly in a crumbling and deteriorating state early evening on Tuesday, April 16, 2024 during the FDA delegation’s tour of a logging camp are said to be owned by Atlantic Resource Limited Logging Company.
However, community dwellers told members of the delegation that the abandoned logs are possessed by Horizon Logging Company Limited which now operates in Grand Gedeh County and were dumped there by them two years ago.
Logs abandonment in Liberia is not a new phenomenon as most logging companies in the country have walked out on their logs.
Many deserted logs can be found in large and small-scale concessions, plantations and community forests across the country while some are even used for charcoal, firewood, planks and defecation.
The regulation on abandoned Logs, timber and timber products prescribes penalties for the offense, ranging from fines to forfeiture of forest licenses.
But the FDA’s past administration did not publicly punish companies or individuals involved in the act in spite of glaring evidence.
A 2017 Regulation on Abandoned Logs, Timber and Timber Products promulgated by the FDA considers logs as abandoned when they are unattended to between 15 and 180 working days, based on their location.
