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Illegal logging funds terrorism.  Australian forestry supports timber towns.

Everytime we use Australian sustainable native timber, we are also choosing NOT to support catastrophic illegal logging overseas. According to Interpol Illegal logging contributes between 15 and 30% of the world wood trade every year – and is believed by United Nations experts to range from US$30 to US$100 Billion a year.
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) believes illegal logging directly contributes to funding many criminal groups, including African terrorist groups like Al-Shabaab and Boko Haram.
These groups which are responsible directly for the illegal logging of vast swathes of African forest to finance their operations – using these ill-gotten gains to visit terrible crimes upon women and children including rape, armed abduction, forced marriage, and captivity. These groups also target women/children by using them as instruments and objects of war such as sex slaves, human shields, and suicide bombers.

Traditional hunters gather on vehicles on their way to engage Boko Haram militants in Nigeria, the hunters have being assisting the Nigerian military in their fight against the insurgents.

If these groups suffer military defeat, their economic clout enabled by illegal logging enables them to regroup and resurface. This enables them to procure advanced military equipment and access advanced military training, and work to further destabilize the countries they are working within.
In recent times, activists have targeted the native timber industry to our detriment. However, when looking at the broader picture it’s clear that human rights and environmental sustainability beyond our own borders face their own catastrophes. Acting in the best interest of the sustainable Australian native timber industry has flow on effects to our own workforce and timber reliant industries, domestic fire safety and to humanitarian and environmental outcomes internationally.
The choice is very clear when it comes to hardwood timber supply – we must choose a well-regulated sustainable industry here in Australia – with the rigorous oversights that a stable democracy and ingrained institutions afford, with the added benefit of sustaining our communities and enabling home grown manufacturing success stories.
Failing that we are choosing to support the chaotic wanderings of semi-functioning foreign governments and their resident criminal and terrorist groups where illegal logging funds some of history’s most heinous crimes against both humanity and the environment.
Unfortunately this seems not to register with Victorian State Labor government and the activist class, where votes and purported virtue are more important than environmental and humanitarian outcomes.
Luckily there is a groundswell of everyday Australians that can see the unbridled hypocrisy on display and are choosing for all the right reasons to use Australian sustainable native timber at every given opportunity.
ENDS
For further comment, please contact
FWCA executive officer Michael Harrington;
m.harrington@fwca.org.au

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