Local News

Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and Sustainable Development Liselle Alamilla today gave Love News an update on the Rosewood assessment.

Liselle Alamilla - Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and Sustainable Development

“We are not doing the assessment of the rosewood stocks yet, what we have been doing is going to each community with the assistance of NGOs to take out the message to the communities to bring out all the Rosewood flitches they have and to alert them too that they are not supposed to be cutting down any more or converting any fallen trees to flitches and to bring them out to a central area in their communities.  They have been doing that, some communities have already called and said that their flitches are all out and they are ready to be stamped. The deadline for them taking out their flitiches is Saturday.  Perhaps it will take us two weeks Forest Department will set up a schedule of when they will go into the communities to stamp and measure the flitches so that they can start selling them.  We have also gone to the agents that have been buying them and we have taken an assessment of what they have in stock so everything has to reconcile so when it is exported everything adds up and to make sure that we as Government get our royalty.”

Alamilla explained that she has been to villages like Boom Creek and Santa Teresa to personally meet with the villagers and spoken to them so that they better understand what the rosewood moratorium entails.  She says she’s been getting a positive response.  Alamilla met this morning with industry stakeholders and she also recently met with women in Indian Creek to listen to their concerns as an initiative to move different sectors forward under her ministry.