President Xi Jinping has signalled that all natural forests should be protected. According to Zhao Shucong, Head of the State Forestry Administration (SFA), China will stop commercial logging in natural forests in three stages.<\/p>\n
In the first stage commercial logging in natural forests in the state-owned forests in the Northeast and Inner Mongolia will be halted. These areas provide around 2.56 million cubic metres of logs annually. At the same time logging bans will be piloted in state-owned forest farms, collectives and individual natural forests falling outside protected forest areas.<\/p>\n
In the second stage, commercial logging in other categories of natural forests will be phased out but logging will continue non-natural forests falling within collective and individual non-natural forest areas. The final stage will be the cessation of commercial harvesting in all natural forests by the end of 2020.<\/p>\n
China has implemented a Natural Forest Protection Programme (NFPP) for the past 16 years but the forests in many provinces have not recovered as anticipated. It is estimated that almost 200 million hectares of natural forests need to be protected but currently only 64% fall with the NFPP.<\/p>\n
The loss of around 50 million cubic metres of annual harvests from the natural forests in China will add to the already huge gap between demand for timber and supply and greater reliance will fall on imports until sufficient plantation areas can be established.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"