Ecobreves – HONDURAS: Difficulty Enacting Forestry Law

By IPS Correspondents and - - Reprint | | Print |

TEGUCIGALPA, Apr 14 2008 (IPS) - The recently approved Forestry Law in Honduras could turn into dead letter if the next director of the Forestry Conservation Institute (ICF) comes from the logging sector, which for decades has led deforestation in this Central American country, warn ecologists. The Environmental Justice Coalition underscored in a communiqué the strategic importance of the institute head to apply the law, replacing the Honduran Corporation for Forest Development, which has a reputation for corruption and abuse of authority.

“Everything indicates that control of the Institute will fall to someone linked to the [logging industry], so we are left in the same situation,” Catholic priest and environmental activist Andrés Tamayo, who announced a protest march in the next month, told Tierramérica.

There are also rumors that the new forestry head would be a public servant who has been implicated in trafficking of illegally cut lumber.