And environmentalists say they have since monitored a dramatic increase in timber cutting in rain forests that a decade ago covered 43 percent of the country. The Oriental Timber Company's roads and timber operations have expanded deeper into the rain forest. What was once a towering, untouched jungle habitat of rare forest elephants and pygmy hippopotamuses is now a honeycomb of quarter-mile wide strips of deforested bush and road. Now I don't see that any more. We don't even know if we're on national forest lands any more.
Timber is one of the few industries remaining in the shattered economy.
Timber exports are also one of the few legal sources of revenue for the government of President Charles Taylor, a former warlord who has been accused of prolonging a decade of civil war in neighboring Sierra Leone, by arming rebels there in exchange for smuggled diamonds. With the adoption of the Strategic Commodities Act in 1999, Taylor assumed control over the export of Liberia's natural resources. That control includes the power to approve logging concessions to foreign companies. In December, the UN Security Council dropped a timber embargo from a packet of economic sanctions against Taylor's regime. China rejected the timber embargo and, according to a diplomat at the US Embassy in Monrovia, France also took steps to kill the measure.