Forest Echo: Solomon Foresty Association

These days wherever there's a logging operation in Solomon Islands, you are sure to find landowners at work close to the log pond sawing timber.

They will be using one or other of the popular brands of portable sawmill, a Lucas or Peterson that very likely came into their hands from royalty moneys on their harvested timber or a grant from the logging contractor as part of their harvesting agreement.

The people do not have to move far to find their raw materials because harvesters are only too happy for them to use reject logs. It is a win-win arrangement for both. The companies have their log ponds cleared of waste timber that would otherwise make the place look untidy and the landowners are producing timber on their own mills for village housing, churches, schools or to be shipped (often free-of-charge) on the company's barge to Honiara for sale.

The Peterson sawmill is reported to have the most distinguished recovery rate among these pick-up-and-shift mills and can work with just one operator, as Donley Gomese is finding at Iriquila where he is now working a $150,000 mill, a gift from John Beverley of Allardyce Lumber Company who has a long association with the people of Vella La Vella.

In the past the Peterson has won portable sawmilling competitions in USA and New Zealand where it is manufactured, scoring top marks for a recovery rate of 70%, speedy production of 1.5 cubic metres per hours for two men and accuracy of just 1mm variance. The quality of the mill is excellent, being the only one made almost entirely of stainless steel and alloy.

Elsewhere in the Western Province at the Bohoro logging operation, a group of boys under the watchful eye of landowner and Timber Control Officer, Harold Teu make light work of sawing round log off-cuts to produce their own housing timber. They will later take it by road to their villages on Kalena Timber Company trucks, with the blessing of the camp manager.

According to the company's General Manager, Austin Holmes, it's one of many ways Kalena and the landowners have benefited from a mutual-benefit relationship that has existed on the North New Georgia land of four tribes for more than 20 years.


March 2005