A photo posted on the Facebook page of Vu Duc Loc in Gia Lai Province shows men standing over logs of wood from local forest
Investigators in Gia Lai Province in the Central Highlands are searching for a group of illegal loggers who impudently let themselves be filmed and photographed.
Bui Duc Viet, head of the Forest Management Unit of Krong Pa District, told Tuoi Tre that the video was taken in the area under his jurisdiction.
“We are looking for the people driving wood logs in the video.”
Vu Dinh Loc has admitted to filming the video at a local forest.
Loc first shared some photos of the illegal logging to a Facebook page with around 10,000 members on March 30.
Some angry Facebookers traced the photos back to his own Facebook page and found even more photos and the video, which showed around ten men resting near around 50 motorbikes loaded with timber logs.
Loc was apparently having a fun recording the video, as if he had been a reporter.
He asked one logger in the video: “How much did you bribe the forest rangers today?”
The man answered with a smile: “VND10,000 apiece.”
“That’s VND3 million (US$140) for all these logs. That’s good,” Loc said.
According to the conversations in the video, all the timber was Asian Rosewood (Dalbergia oliveri), a rare and valuable kind in the rosewood family.
Loc even left a mobile phone number on each Facebook post for buyers to contact him.
He told Tuoi Tre newspaper that he made the video a long time ago.
“I watched it and found that it was fun, so I posted it on Facebook,” he said.
A report from Vietnam’s agriculture ministry released in December 2011 showed that illegal logging caused six percent of forest loss in the country.
Officials at a meeting earlier this month said deforestation has persisted as it is either condoned or overlooked by the authorities.
Đăng ký: VietNam News