Fund freeze

IT STARTED with a big hype but is now
veering towards a rather unfortunate
collapse. A us $65-million experiment,
which had the backing of the
Commonwealth leaders, to save tropical rainforests in Guyana, is now
coming apart as funds to sustain the
programme have been difficult to
come by. The project began in 1989,
after Desmond Hoyte, president of
Guyana, offered 360,000 ha of
virgin forest - the lwokrama forest -
to develop and arrive at conservation steps to save rainforests from
extinction.

The programme was started with
a fund of US $5 million and the field
centre came up at Kurupukari in
Guyana. it would have helped botanists
scout for medicinal plants, given an
insight to the foresters to harvest trees
in a sustainble manner and also aided
the development of ecologically sound
means of mining gold and diamond
reserves. Scientists manning the project
recently quit the scene. But Conrad
Gorinsky, co-author of the Common-
wealth plan, believes that if the project
fails, the loggers will get their way in
Guyana. They are already cutting down
huge areas of the forest.