Act Now! PNG has released a third report, highlighting yet again, one of the many logging abuses in Papua New Guinea.
Titled “Where is the Beef? The Wasu Cattle Farm Project”, the report points out the abuse of the Forest Clearing Authority (FCA) concession.
This new report is a case study out OF Wasu in the Tewai-Siassi District of Morobe Province.
The report is a third of a series and focuses on a project that is referred to alternatively as a cattle project or an integrated agriculture project, but to date, there hasn’t been any cattle on ground or any agriculture project.
The Morobe based Wasu Integrated Agriculture Project, received an FCA in 2019 and began exporting logs in 2021.
To date, it has generated over K15.6 (US$4.5 million) in log export revenue for Malaysian owned Wasu Resource Limited.
The new report highlights:
• Allegations by customary landowners that they did not give their legally-required consent to the project;
• The absence of any evidence that the logging company has established a cattle farm in the area, despite exporting logs valued at over K15 million since 2021; and
• Evidence from satellite imagery showing a logging pattern more consistent with commercial selective logging than forest clearance for agriculture.
In a statement released yesterday following the release of the report, Act Now! calls on the Government to act now and address the abuse of the Forest Clearing Authority (FCA).
An FCA is a type of logging license intended to allow forest clearing to promote use of land for the economic development. However, previous reports by ACT NOW! and others have discussed cases in which FCA licenses have been misused to facilitate large-scale selective commercial logging activities.
ACT NOW! is calling on the government to undertake an independent, public and transparent audit of all existing FCAs’.
Act Now! Campaign Manager, Eddie Tanago says, until this is done, log exports from FCAs should be suspended.
He said an urgent review should also be conducted to see if the Wasu Cattle Farm project is operating legally.
The full report can be accessed through the Act Now! website.
The other related reports are “Ten Years Without A Crop- The Wammy Rural Development Project” and “A New Forest Grab – The Mengen Integrated Agriculture Project“.
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