Another major rosewood bust in the south

Rosewood might not be exactly on the center stage right now, but if you’re thinking that means that loggers and exporters have given up on the precious wood, you would be wrong. They’ve just gotten a little less brazen. And sneakier too, since reports reaching News Five indicate that a sizeable shipment of rosewood was set to be moved over the Independence weekend. That’s when authorities could be expected to be a lot less vigilant, but that wasn’t the case at all. In fact, acting on information received last Thursday, a joint operation in the deep-south on Friday netted the rosewood, freshly cut and ready to go. Chief Forest Officer, Wilber Sabido, says that the operation demonstrates the determination of the department to crack down on illegal rosewood harvesting.

Via Phone: Wilber Sabido, Chief Forest Officer

Wilber Sabido

“We launched an operation with the BDF on Friday to confirm the report. We essentially went into the Deep River Forest Reserve through the river, because by land we couldn’t access the area because of the terrain. And we essentially found a number of rosewood flitches in the Forest Reserve. In total, at least the volume of flitches that were accessible were in excess of fifty-three pieces which is just about fifteen hundred board feet. Because we received in essence secondhand reports, when we arrived at the area we didn’t find anybody so what we went ahead and did was to confiscate the material, we teased it…we were working with assistance from TIDE, the Fisheries Department and the BDF and we have managed to take out just about thirteen flitches, and these are large size flitches, and we’re still in the process of taking out the rest. The intention really is to make it available to the local market because as it is right now we aren’t allowing any export other than the ones that were declared some time ago. We want to make it absolutely clear that we have zero tolerance after we have given the liberty to the loggers and the exporters to declare their rosewood…that we have zero tolerance for any rosewood that is being harvested illegally and so we move immediately to confiscate…and if we find anyone…and this is where I must say that we have very good support from the Magistrate Court…where we find anyone that is in possession of rosewood we immediately process them through the Magistrate Court and we have had very good success at that level in terms of imposing fines and penalties on those that are caught.”

And in some more good news from the Forest Department, Sabido confirmed that they have gotten a financial commitment from G.O.B. to carry out a comprehensive inventory of rosewood remaining in Belize’s forest. That’s a daunting task, but the department is all set to get started as soon as the dry season gets underway.