Tomuriesa calls for better balance in forestry sector

The National National

By JOSUA MANI
Forest Minister Douglas Tomuriesa says the harvesting of trees should be properly managed to promote sustainability.
He was speaking at International Day of Forests celebrations at PNG Forest Authority (PNGFA) headquarters in Port Moresby on Thursday.
Tomuriesa said the day’s theme, “Forest and Education”, carried a timely message.
“It is important to keep balance in the forest industry by managing our forests, which is where policies relating to forest management come in,” he said.
“The managing director’s office must adopt Government policies and make sure that we drive those policies.
“For the first time in 40 years of operations in forestry, PNG has come up with a downstream processing policy framework to guide us forward and see that PNG stops exporting round logs by 2020.
“The idea of downstream processing policy and other forest policies are to keep our forests green and safeguard our vast biodiversity.”
East New Britain Governor Nakikus Konga, who accompanied Tomuriesa to the event, said his province had lost about 30 per cent of its forest already.
He said he would work with Konga to make sure forests in East New Britain were not harvested rapidly without ways to preserve it.
“There are about 40-plus logging operations in the country, which means that every day we are losing thousands of cubic metres of good logs to other countries,” Konga said.
“The question is: are we preserving some of these tree species?
“It is important to look after the forest and species of trees, because it is where we get most of our needs from.
“We need to slow down the rate of cutting down trees and look at processing our logs in the country.
“The Government is doing its very best to come up with a policy to control the harvest and export of trees and encourage downstream processing.”
PNGFA acting managing director Goodwill Amos said PNG had about 70 per cent forest cover, which was one of the highest in the world.
He said the world was looking upon PNG to manage and conserve its forests.