International Photojournalist and Photographer

Deep into the jungle, in the Hoa Binh province of North West Vietnam, we find evidence of recent logging and milling in this ancient rainforest. Is this logging illegal? Mature hardwood trees felled. Fresh red Vietnamese “mahogany” shavings from the large chainsaws used to fell and plank the trees covers the area.

Unfinished business? Perhaps the lumberjacks left a few trunks to be collected later or maybe they were scared off by an official park ranger?  Perhaps the trees were knowingly felled and sawn by a team from a local village?

According the the UK government backed illegal-logging.info website: “In Vietnam some local administrations have also been accused of involvement in illegal logging.” In one hilltribe village in a protected area within the Pu Luong nature reserve, a house is used to store valuable hardwood planks and logs apparently “legally” cut down in the area by  ”government employees”.

Government employed park rangers are poorly paid and they  find it “impossible to monitor the huge area of around 18,000 hectares, and to protect the trees deep inside the rainforest,” according to a local source.

The loggers reputedly creep through the jungle on tiny paths and carry out their valuable contraband to waiting vehicles.

The illegal loggers “know the area well,” an anonymous local village chief informed me.

“It’s very difficult to stop this the illegal trade because the wood is so valuable. One good tree can buy them a new car in Hanoi,” he continued.

In a country which suffered massive deforestation throughout the Agent Orange campaign in the American war “in which an estimated 2million ha [of rainforest] were destroyed or degraded,” the need for an effective government backed monitoring and policing regime to protect the remaining mature tree stock is surely paramount?

Images taken between 21st and 24th July 2011.