Monday, July 22, 2013
Panorama: Jungle Outlaws: the Chainsaw Trail, BBC One, review
In Jungle Outlaws: the Chainsaw Trail (BBC One), Panorama's Raphael Rowe reported on illegal logging in the world's second largest rainforest in Congo, home to some of the world's most endangered species. It contains 18 per cent of the planet's remaining tropical rainforest, but logging companies are attracted by the premium prices paid for its tropical hardwood trees.
One logging worker told him what happens when sought-after trees are found. "When you find a tree you want, even if it's 2km or 10km [into the forest], you need a road for the bulldozers. The trees [that are in the way], they cut them down to make a road to fetch the trees they need. They ravage everything."
Last year so many Okoume hardwood trees from the region were cut down that the government imposed an export ban. New EU laws have been introduced to stop it making its way through European ports. But Rowe showed how easily attempts at both ends of the supply chain were being circumvented.
In a report that looked as though it may have involved personal risk, Rowe filmed Okoume logs being transported at night, when government checkpoints are unmanned, then arriving at the port of La Rochelle in Western France. The logging company's markings on the trees had been altered to obscure their region of origin, thus evading EU checks, and ending up for sale across Europe, sometimes as plywood.
Rowe's problem was how to make an important story that involved lots of tracking of paperwork easy to follow, while holding the attention. It wasn't the easiest task, but it was rigorously pursued.
Source : http://telegraph.feedsportal.com/c/32726/f/568414/s/2f043843/l/0L0Stelegraph0O0Cculture0Ctvandradio0Ctv0Eand0Eradio0Ereviews0C10A1961260CPanorama0EJungle0EOutlaws0Ethe0EChainsaw0ETrail0EBBC0EOne0Ereview0Bhtml/story01.htm
