{{A senior Zanzibar government official has said the island state is increasingly becoming a transit point for timber illegally harvested on Mainland Tanzania.}}
“When I look through my small window in my small office overlooking the sea I always see several vessels ferrying timber from the Mainland,” said Dr Bakari Asseid, the deputy principal secretary in the Zanzibar Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources.
He was speaking at a two-day 2nd East Africa Timber Trade Stakeholders’ Forum on Coordinating Solutions to the Illegal and Unsustainable Timber Trade in Tanzania, Kenya and Mozambique which ended yesterday.
“Zanzibar does not have that many trees but the pace at which the Islands are exporting timber are alarming,” Dr Asseid told the forum jointly organized by the WWF’s Coastal East Africa Global Initiative (WWF-CEAGI), TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network, and the Tanzania Natural Resource Forum (TNRF).
“At one time Kenya was the leading exporter of cloves while the country doesn’t grow a single clove tree. Cloves are grown in Zanzibar. And now I can predict that Zanzibar is soon going to be a major exporter of timber while the Island has not forestry reserves worth exporting,” he said.
He said most of the timber that was being exported through Zanzibar was illegally harvested in mainland Tanzania. The President of Tanzania Forest Industries Federation, Mr Ben Sulus, told local media at the forum that there were more than 50 illegal ports along the Mtwara and Lindi regions coastal line used for exporting illegally harvested timber.
NMG
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