What does logging mean for indigenous people and the plants and animals of the rainforest?
Throughout the world, several hundred thousand indigenous forest dwellers – including Indians, Pygmies, Dayaks, and Papuans – have been deprived of their livelihood by logging. These people are suffering from hunger, have become the victims of violence from newcomers such as lumberjacks, displaced people and new settlers, and are dying due to the importation of civilization’s diseases to which they are not immune. In cases where logging has led to major clearcutting, such as in Southeast Asia and West Africa, it has resulted in the eradication of thousands of species of animals and plants. Erosion, and the accompanying destruction of the thin and relatively infertile layer of humus and the total change in the microclimate are among subsequent problems. How can people live in the rainforest if they cannot sell wood? For the traditional forest inhabitants, the forest provides all that they need. Indigenous forest dwellers, rubber tappers and many other groups of local people obtain many
