DGR stands in fierce solidarity with all people who resist logging. Let’s not forget that the legal system is set up by the rich and powerful to serve them, which is why it has proven ineffective in resisting the destruction by large companies in most cases.
Transport Bois Négoce International (TBNI), a Chinese forestry company, has built new roads in preparation to cut timber in a concession which includes a previously unlogged forest in northeastern Gabon.
Residents of the village of Massaha, on the northern edge of this forest, have been managing hunting and other use of this forest since 2019; they formally requested reclassification of the forest as a protected area in August 2020.
Gabon’s forest code makes explicit provision for local communities to initiate reclassification of sensitive forest as a protected area, and villagers are anxious for the government to respond before TBNI advances any further.
A forestry company in Gabon has built new roads to log a forest in the northeastern province of Ogooué-Ivindo. Villagers had applied to the government last August to reclassify this valuable forest as a protected area, and say they are alarmed by the company’s rapid advance while they wait for a formal response.
Rural communities in this area rely on local forests for fishing, hunting and gathering. These livelihoods and the wildlife populations they depend on are increasingly threatened by mining, intensive logging, and poaching for the illegal ivory trade and unregulated commercial hunting for bushmeat. A massive increase in logging by foreign companies over the last decade — around 40 companies hold logging concessions covering most of the area — and associated road building has opened access to formerly intact forests and razed local ecosystems.
In response, three Ogooué-Ivindo villages have taken steps to protect the environment and their way of life. The villages of Latta, Ebessi, and Massaha have established management plans to regulate hunting practices and delineate informal protected reserves in their forests.
Massaha village: the first Gabonese community to apply to the government to declare its forest a protected area
With logging rapidly expanding, the village of Massaha, 56 kilometers (35 miles) from the provincial capital of Makokou, has gone one step further. A portion of the forest relied on by villagers is also part of a vast 41,000-hectare (101,300-acre) logging concession (called UFG-2, Unité forestières de gestion 2) held by a Chinese forestry company, Transport Bois Négoce International (TBNI). The company was the subject of a 2019 investigation by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), which exposed TBNI’s involvement in bribery, transfer pricing and other corrupt methods to evade taxes and maximize profits.
Massaha has submitted an official request for 11,300 hectares (27,900 acres) of UFG-2 to be reclassified as a protected area with sustainable hunting management.
A pioneering application of Gabon’s Forest Code: Under Articles 55 and 67 of Gabon’s Forest Code, an area already allocated for forestry may be declassified when “significant biological richness, high heritage value, or substantial environmental risks” are identified. The villagers of Massaha have applied for 11,300 ha (27,900 acres) of the logging concession known as Unité forestières de gestion 2 to be declassified following the procedure set out in Article 2 of Decree No. 001032-PE-MEFEPEPN of 1/12/2004, which states that such a process may be initiated at the request of a local community.
According to Gabon’s Forest Code, forest already allocated to a logging concession may be declassified if it is found to have “significant biological richness, high heritage value, or substantial environmental risks.” Outlining the procedure for such reclassification, the code explicitly states that the process may be initiated “at the express request of a local community.” This is the first time that a rural Gabonese community has launched such an appeal.
The forest in the concession area south of the Liboumba River has never been logged. It is home to threatened species such as forest elephants (Loxodonta cyclotis), chimpanzees, gorillas, leopards, and pangolins, as well as an abundance of centuries-old trees including protected species such as moabi (Baillonella toxisperma) and kevazingo (Guibourtia tesmannii).
The villagers use their forest for hunting, fishing, and farming; the forest here also contains ancestral villages and ritual sites of invaluable cultural wealth. Serge Ekazama-Koto, a local researcher, explains what is at stake for his community: “TBNI’s logging practices in this area will inevitably destroy the entire foundation of our village. We do not want to be a village without roots or history; our ancestors founded this village, their graves are found there, and the forest is sacred to us.”
Two new logging roads already open, sign of imminent logging by TBNI
Since 2018, authorization for logging is conditional upon companies having a state-validated wildlife protection plan, drawn up with the participation of all stakeholders and readily accessible to all interested parties. While its wildlife protection plan is still under review, TBNI has been allowed to continue logging. The company’s wildlife manager for the area, Junior Peme, told Mongabay the company is using camera traps to determine the species diversity in the area, and mapping the impacts of human activity in the area on medium-size and large mammals.
The company’s environmental integrity has been called into question by the village of Latta (whose forest lies in a section of UFG-2 that TBNI has already logged). Community patrols there have found evidence of hunting with wire snares (illegal in Gabon) by company employees inside the village’s self-designated management area, where they themselves have prohibited hunting by outsiders. The village’s management plan is not legally binding but has been acknowledged by both provincial authorities and TBNI.
Peme declined to comment on Massaha’s reclassification request, but the company has already completed an inventory of timber in a portion of the logging concession within the proposed protected area. In February 2021, it built two new logging roads there, running from the national road that passes through the village to near the northern shore of the Liboumba River. Logging could begin at any time, threatening the reclassification request before it has been formally considered. All this with the results of TBNI’s inventories of flora and fauna not available.
Massaha awaiting response from national authorities
The village delivered its request in official letters to the governor of Ogooué-Ivindo, the provincial director of water and forests, and TBNI on Aug. 6, 2020. The provincial director formally responded to the request on Aug. 19, and transferred the file to the national ministerial authority the next day. Following this, village leaders met with him several times. A string of back-and-forth correspondence among the various entities has ensued, but no concrete action has yet been taken. All the while, preparation for logging in the proposed protected area moves forward apace.
The provincial director of water and forests was unavailable for comment, as he is currently out of the province on extended business. But villagers say they are confident their request will find a favorable audience in government. In May 2020, Lee White, Gabon’s minister of forests, oceans, environment and climate change, said the country “must take ownership” of the initiative to protect 30% of lands and seas by 2030, proposed under the Convention on Biological Diversity.
At a village meeting held in Massaha on Feb. 20 this year, the villagers reaffirmed their commitment to seeing their forest reclassified as a protected area. On March 3, they delivered another letter to the provincial director of water and forests, asking for news on the status of their application.
They have yet to receive a reply. But TBNI employees have since arrived and are now staying in the village.
On March 30, the village wrote a letter addressed to the national minister stating they “reserve the right to take multifaceted actions if an answer is not given […] as soon as possible.”
Benjamin Evine-Binet is the director of Ivindo FM community radio station in Makokou. Madeleine Barois contributed to producing this report.
SEND YOUR PHOTOS OF YELLOWSTONE’S WILD BUFFALO TO MONTANA’S GOVERNOR WITH AN IMPORTANT MESSAGE: PLEASE VETO HB 318 AND HB 302
PLEASE POST THIS URGENT NOTICE ON YOUR SOCIAL NETWORKSOur vote counter anticipates HB 318 and HB 302 will reach Governor Greg Gianforte’s desk by Friday, April 9, and for certain the week of April 12–16.
In previous legislative sessions, people from around the country who
love wild buffalo rallied public pressure and persuaded Montana’s
Governor to veto the worst buffalo bills from becoming law. We need
your help again.
Buffalo Field Campaign is encouraging everyone everywhere to send your photos of Yellowstone’s wild buffalo to Governor Greg Gianforte with an important message: Please recognize there are wild buffalo in Montana and efforts are needed to recover the wild migratory species by vetoing HB 318 and HB 302.
Please act now. Your hand written letters, postcards, phone calls,
emails, and personal contacts with the Governor can change outcomes.HB 318 changes the legal definition of “wild” buffalo in a way that
appears to not recognize any “wild” buffalo in Montana. VETO HB 318!
HB 302 hands veto power to county officials over any state decision to reintroduce buffalo in Montana. VETO HB 302!
A century ago, buffalo owned by Pablo–Allard and Goodnight were reintroduced into Yellowstone’s northern range and reduced to captivity on the Lamar Buffalo Ranch. Yet HB 318, a bill to change the legal definition of “wild” buffalo, would not recognize a buffalo that “has never been owned by a person.”
In 2019, former Governor Steve Bullock vetoed a bill with a similar legal definition used in HB 318 because it “presents unintended consequences” for Yellowstone’s wild herds, not just individual buffalo, which “could be inappropriately deemed domestic.”
HB 302 arbitrarily gives a board of county commissioners veto power over the state’s decision to reintroduce American bison. We agree with the principle of local control for local decisions, but reintroducing American bison, a keystone wildlife species, is a state decision – one in which local communities fully participate.
Montana lawmakers already impose costly, unfunded mandates impeding restoration of wild buffalo. HB 302 further erodes and undermines Montana’s trust responsibility for recovering imperiled American bison.
Check our Buffalo Bill Tracker page for timely updates on the status of HB 318 and HB 302. Thank you for taking action for American bison our beloved National Mammal.
Fort McDermitt, Nevada — Opposition to lithium mining is growing in native communities in Nevada. On Monday, the Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribe formally resolved to cancel a Project Engagement Agreement with mining company Lithium Nevada, citing threats to land, water, wildlife, hunting and gathering areas, and sacred sites.
The Tribal Council also agreed to initiate a lawsuit against the Bureau of Land Management for violations of federal law in permitting the Thacker Pass lithium mine project to proceed.
These moves, from a tribal council which was previously supportive or neutral towards the mine, come after pressure from traditionalists in the Fort McDermitt community. On March 22, these traditionalists brought a petition to the tribal government asking that they “stop all partnerships with any mining company and to file a lawsuit against Lithium Nevada Corp LNC, Lithium America, Jindalee Resources Limited and any other company associated to stop the development of the proposed Lithium Mine at Thacker Pass, Nevada.”
The group cited violations of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, and other laws.
Opposition to the Thacker Pass mine has been growing since January 15th, when the Bureau of Land Management approved the federal permit for the project and—on the same day—a protest camp was established on the proposed mine site. Members of the Fort McDermitt tribe have played an important role in resupplying and overseeing the camp, which is located on their traditional lands. Over the past two months, community members, elders, families, and spiritual leaders have spent time at Thacker Pass engaging in ceremony, including a 273-mile prayer walk ending at the site, and visitors have come from many nearby reservations.
The Thacker Pass mine is also broadly opposed by residents of Orovada and King’s River, two nearby unincorporated communities. One rancher has filed a lawsuit, citing impacts to groundwater, streams, and to threatened Lahontan cutthroat trout, and a local community group, “Thacker Pass Concerned Citizens,” has formed with the majority of members expressing opposition or serious concerns. A coalition of four environmental groups has also filed a lawsuit against the project, and the group “Protect Thacker Pass” setup the protect camp nearly three months ago.
The lithium industry is booming worldwide as governments shift subsidies towards electric vehicles, which are powered by lithium-ion batteries, and towards wind and solar power which often require battery storage for periods when wind stops and nighttime or clouds block the sun.
There are numerous proposed lithium mine projects in Nevada and the United States. The petition filed Monday night also mentions Jindalee Resources, an Australian mining company currently exploring for lithium deposits just north of the Oregon border, near Fort McDermitt. Another proposed lithium mine located at Rhyolite Ridge, further south in Nevada, has attracted major opposition due to an endangered wildflower on the site.
A controversial project to build a rail line for transporting soybeans and other commodities through Indigenous lands in the Brazilian Amazon may get its environmental license as soon as April.
Prosecutors in the state of Pará, where the line will terminate at the Miritituba river port, have filed a court request for a suspension of the project until prior consultation with the affected Indigenous communities have been carried out.
The request seeks to challenge the project on its economic viability, with prosecutors arguing that without detailed data on costs and compensation measures, there is no way of knowing how the project will impact on public coffers.
This is the first time that prosecutors have highlighted a project’s viability to seek its suspension.
A controversial freight railway line that would cut through Indigenous lands in the Brazilian Amazon looks set to be approved for construction by the federal government as soon as April, despite a lawsuit pending against it by local prosecutors.
The EF-170 railroad, known as the Ferrogrão, or “Grainway,” is a priority project of the federal government and will run 933 kilometers (580 miles) from the municipality of Sinop, in Mato Grosso state, to Miritituba in Pará state. The call for a tender is expected to be released within the first quarter of 2021, and the project is expected to be granted its environmental license in April.
All the freight traffic between the two cities currently flows through the BR-163 highway, bringing produce from Mato Grosso north to the river terminal in Pará. At present, though, more than 70% of Mato Grosso’s harvest is trucked southeast to the Atlantic ports of Santos and Paranaguá for export. With the railroad, the government aims to avoid this arduous step of the journey, instead sending commodities like soybean and corn to the transshipment terminal in Miritituba and onto ships sailing out to the Atlantic via the Tapajós, Tocantins and Amazon rivers. Aside from grains, the government also plans to transport soybean oil, fertilizers, sugar, ethanol, and petroleum products.
While the railroad is considered vital for grain shipping, the way the federal government is pushing ahead with the project has raised concerns.
In particular, the Federal Prosecutor’s Office (MPF) in Pará has challenged the government’s failure to seek the free, prior and informed consent of the Indigenous peoples through whose lands the railway would pass. In October, the MPF and five civil society organizations filed a request with the Federal Court of Accounts, the government accountability office, for the precautionary suspension of the privatization process and for the call for tender to be stopped.
Public prosecutor Felipe Moura Palha said the fact that the federal government has violated the Indigenous communities’ right to participate in discussions about the project risks imposing significant economic losses in the future. “This is the first time that the MPF has called on the Court of Accounts to analyze a large project in the Amazon with an eye on economics,” he said.
The MPF says the lack of data on the real environmental impacts of the project means the cost of compensation could be greater than imagined and possibly lead to losses from the public coffers. “We maintain that prior consultation, analysis and the effect on Indigenous communities in the economic viability analysis for the project is essential,” Palha said.
In response to the request filed by the MPF, the court notified the National Land Transportation Agency (ANTT), the federal regulator for railway and highway infrastructure, and Funai, the federal agency for Indigenous affairs, to carry out consultations with Indigenous peoples along the route of the planned rail line. But even then, the federal government has played foul, according to the MPF: prosecutors allege that the government’s Special Secretariat of the Partnerships and Investments Program (SE-PPI) tried to improperly entice an Indigenous Munduruku leader to act on behalf of the tribe.
The Munduruku people, with a population of about 13,700 occupying territories along the Tapajós River, have their own political organizations. According to the MPF, the government sought out a single person to be “the speaker granted representation to articulate the interests of his people.” On Dec. 14, the MPF recommended that the prior consultation process also include the project’s impacts on the Indigenous peoples in the state of Mato Grosso who would be directly or indirectly affected by the Grainway. The recommendation was aimed at Funai and IBAMA, the federal environmental protection agency.
Indigenous people ignored
Melillo Dinis is a lawyer with the Instituto Kabu, representing 12 communities of the Mẽbêngôkre-Kayapó people, including some 12,000 Kayapós. He said the Indigenous people have yet to form an opinion about the Grainway because the project has not yet even been presented to them. Dinis said there are currenty three issues under debate: the right to prior consultation and fulfillment of Indigenous protocol, neither of which were acknowledged by the government of President Jair Bolsonaro; the need for thorough social and environmental evaluation of the degradation, deforestation and growing tensions over territory in the region; and the fact that representatives of governmental agencies affirmed that Indigenous rights would be respected but did not carry out their promises.
“The context that has been presented to us until now is completely disrespectful of Indigenous peoples,” he said. “They have been living here for around 10,000 years. We will fight until the end.”
Dinis noted that the project has been dragged out over previous administrations; the Grainway was proposed in 2016, under the watch of then-president Dilma Rousseff, who was later that year impeached and replaced by Michel Temer. Temer was succeeded by Bolsonaro.
“Before, they would listen to us but wouldn’t pay any attention,” Dinis said of the Rousseff and Temer administrations. “This administration won’t even listen to us. So the outcome is the same.”
Prosecutor Palha said there’s no way to stipulate a ceiling on spending on the project without knowing how much to allocate for environmental compensation.
“We are not opposed to development projects,” he said. “Our request is: carry out the prior consultation before claiming that the project is viable so it can be discussed.”
He cited the case of the Belo Monte dam in the state of Pará as an example. A significant decline in the flow rate of the Xingu River now threatens the viability of the dam, raising the prospect of new power plants, likely fired by fossil fuels, needing to be built.
“We want to avoid this situation with the Grainway, having a project already installed that hasn’t been properly planned,” Palha said. “This is why the Court of Accounts is carrying out an unprecedented economics analysis.”
Controversy over the Grainway began in 2016 when it was announced that studies would be carried out to make the project viable. In 2018, Mongabay reported that the Kayapó people had expressed their concern over the potential threats posed by the railway and had written a letter to the ANTT. In it, tribal chief Anhe Kayapó said:
“The Grainway cannot be built without reinforcing controls, protection and vigilance in the Conservation Units and Indigenous Lands [along its route].”
Protect Thacker Pass with activists Max Wilbert, Will Falk and Rebecca Wildbear
Activists aiming to stop Lithium Americas’ Thacker Pass open-pit lithium mine – what would be the United States’ largest lithium mine, supplying up to 25% of the world’s lithium – launched a permanent protest encampment hours after the Bureau of Land Management gave final approval to the mine on January 15.
The Green Flame brings you the voices of land protectors Will Falk and Max Wilbert who mean to stay for as long as it takes to protect this old-growth sagebrush mountainside despite winter conditions at Thacker Pass. Rebecca Wildbear, river and soul guide, lover of the wild, joins us in honoring and calling for defense of the Great Basin, Thacker Pass and the whole of wild creation. Many thanks to Green Flame sound editor Iona and to the many non-human voices – Golden Eagle, Coyote, and Greater Sage Grouse – speaking to us in this Protect Thacker Pass episode of the Green Flame.
![The Green Flame Podcast: Protect Thacker Pass [Dispatches from Thacker Pass]](https://dgrnewsservice.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/18/2021/01/green-flame-news-service.jpg)