88 



According to the 1986 yearbook of Wood Products Statistics, 

 forest products trade included 154 countries of which 115 

 were involved in log import or export or both in Africa, 

 North Central and South America, Asia, Europe and Oceania. 

 About 100 million cubic meters are traded internationally as 

 chips or logs, especially from tropical logs (Ewing and 

 Chalk, 1988) . 



Tlie environmental hazards o£ importing raw logs . 



There is great world-wide trade activity in wood products, 

 including the import and export of raw logs . The logs being 

 moved may represent species native to the export country 

 (i.e. Siberia) or they may represent exotic species grown in 

 plantations in the exporting countries {e.g. Pinus radiata 

 and Pseudotsuga mansiezii in New Zealand, and Pinus radiata 

 in Chile) . While most North American countries have imported 

 few raw logs to date, changing forest resource bases have 

 increased interest in importing raw logs from the countries 

 mentioned above. Wood chips too are brought into many 

 different countries from a number of sources. The 

 biological risks of chip imports have hardly been examined, 

 but the risks of raw logs importation have been discussed in 

 several recent publications (Anonymous, 1991, 1992 and 

 1993). At first, it seemed that importing raw logs for 

 further value-added activities was a hairmless and beneficial 



