Arrests in seven recent forest destruction cases prove the towering success of the State Forestry Bureau’s nationwide tree protection campaign, forestry officials said Monday.

The seven cases include illegal logging, attack on forestry police and forging logging licenses. They were uncovered earlier this year.

The illegal logging case comes from Gongshan County in southwest China’s Yunnan Province where rampant damage to national forest resources aroused wide concerns.

The local government violated the forest protection regulations by issuing a 4,200-cubic-meter logging license to a trade company late last year. Then the company went even farther, cutting more than 23,780 cubic meters of forest.

The bureau and provincial officials sent investigators, yielding 13 arrests.

Among those jailed was the former top county leader and managers of the company, according to a press release from the bureau.

“We hope the national campaign will awe offenders and will further raise national awareness of forest protection,” said Lei Jiafu, the bureau’s deputy director. “These cases revealed that dereliction of duties by local governments and wrongdoings by local enterprises have become major cause of forest destruction.”

Fourteen supervisory groups have been dispatched throughout China since earlier this year to preside over inquiries into such cases.

China banned logging of natural forests since 1998 and allows logging in commercial forests only under strict control, according to the Forest Law.

The forest area in China totals 159 million hectares, covering 16.6 percent of the country’s total area.

(China Daily 07/31/2001)