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France is under growing pressure to take steps to protect the rainforests
of French Guiana, its territory on the Atlantic coast of South America.
Fear of embarrassing criticism from conservationists at the Earth Summit
in June may prompt the government to take action.

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has launched a campaign for a ‘European
Tropical Park’, to be run by the European Commission, for nature reserves
and for strict controls on forestry, hunting and road building in the territory.

‘French Guiana is unique in that it is the most densely wooded country
in the world, the country with the smallest population and the only country
of its kind with absolutely no protected zones,’ says Jean-Marc Thiollay,
an ornithologist at the French national research organisation CNRS. He
agrees with the WWF that conservation measures are urgently needed, even
though 90 per cent of the country is covered by rainforest and most of its
10 0000 inhabitants live in three settlements.

‘In percentage terms, there is as much destruction of primary forest
as in the Amazon,’ says Thiollay, who acts as a government adviser on the
environment. ‘The French government leaves all responsibility to the local
politicians, who have no environmental awareness and see the forest as
a sign of underdevelopment.’

The Forestry Office of the French Ministry of Agriculture is in charge
of timber concessions in Guiana. It argues that only 10 0000 cubic metres
of prime timber are felled each year, all of it in the coastal zone. Yet
forestry officials share the environmentalists’ concern about the unchecked
hunting taking place along roads and tracks opened up by loggers.

‘You can kill and destroy whatever you like. It is the Wild West,’ says
Jean-Francois Terrasses of the WWF. Thiollay agrees: ‘The number of hunters
is small but their impact on species which reproduce slowly is enormous,’
he says. ‘Spider monkey, ibis, curassows and macaws have disappeared from
areas reached by people.’

Forestry officials agree that roads and tracks opened up for logging
should be closed to the public. ‘There ought to be protection. France
is in a delicate position when it does not give any good example itself
of the advice it hands down to others,’ said one senior official.

At the World Forestry Congress in Paris last September, the vice-president
of the WWF, Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, called on France to set
up a biosphere reserve in Guiana and ‘practise what it preached’. The group
France Nature Environment lobbied the con gress with the same demand.

Conservationists also criticise hydroelectric projects in Guiana.
Electricite de France is due to flood 310 square kilometres of unbroken
rainforest at Petit Saut next year. EDF says it is not ‘economically viable’
to fell the trees before flooding. The rotting forest will give off polluting
gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and hydrogen sulphide for several
years after it is flooded.

The reservoir was needed to supply the growing needs of the national
centre for space studies and the satellite launch site at Kourou, 50 kilometres
from the capital Cayenne. Petit Saut will eventually provide 114 megawatts,
which will satisfy all Guiana’s needs for the foreseeable future.

Yet EDF has three other dam projects in the pipeline, one near the border
with Brazil and two ‘mini-dams’ which EDF says will generate ‘just a few
megawatts’. The electricity from these will be sold to neighbouring
countries. ‘There have again been no environmental impact studies. This
is only for export, it is totally unacceptable,’ says Thiollay.

The total absence of an environmental policy for French Guiana contrasts
with the widespread and long-standing scientific research carried out
there. All of France’s main national research institutes have projects
and stations in Guiana.

Yet there has been little or no pressure by scientists for a conservation
policy. ‘French scientists are very unaware of conservation issues in comparison
with British or American researchers,’ says Thiollay. ‘People used to say:
It is a huge reserve, just leave it. That attitude has been overtaken
by developments and official decisions are needed now to address
the problems that will emerge in 20 years,’ said a senior official from
the Forestry Office.