Small Timber Equipment

Big damage in Papua New Guinea: new film documents how industrial logging ...

In one scene a young man, perhaps not long ago a boy, named Douglas stands shirtless and in shorts as he runs a chainsaw into a massive tropical tree. Prior to this we have already heard from an official how employees operating chainsaws must have a bevy of protective equipment as well as training, but in Papua New Guinea these are just words. The reality is this: Douglas straining to pull the chainsaw out of the tree as it begins to fall while his fellow employees flee the tumbling giant.

The new film Bikpela Bagarap ('Big Damage') documents the impact of industrial logging on the lives of local people in Papua New Guinea. Filmed over three months by one guerrilla filmmaker—David Fedele—using a simple handheld camera, the movie shows with startling intimacy how massive corporations, greedy government, and consumption abroad have conspired to ruin lives in places like Vanimo, Papua New Guinea.

"The whole industry is corrupt from the highest level downwards. The entire system is broken, and people have no other choice than to participate in this system—it is basically an unregulated industry," Fedele told mongabay.com in a recent interview.

The corruption starts at the beginning, when tribal groups sign over land for logging without being able to read the documents they are signing while being told little more than sign this and we'll pay you.

"The local landowners have no idea about the value of their trees—so when a company comes in and offers them a little bit of money, or even offers to pay them with other things such as water tanks or roads or houses, most of the time they just jump at the offer and sign whatever is put in front of them," Fedele says.

Then what the locals call 'The Company'—in this case a corporation known as WTK Realty—takes over the community.

Timber stars battle at fair | Forest Business Network

By Henry Miller – Statesman Journal

It  all comes down to the draw and the saw, or for a log-rolling CPA going up against a law student, it depends on if you’re running or bucking.

You can check out the action as the men chop and saw, and the women put on log-rolling exhibitions today and Sunday at the Stihl Timbersports Series events on the Pavilion lawn at the Oregon State Fair.

“This is a really tough group of competitors. I mean you’re talking about the top 20 lumberjack competitors in the United States,” Branden Sirguy of Port Angeles, Wash., one of the top pros, said about the competition.

Two flights of 10 each were whittled to the final eight, four from each group — for today’s pro finals and a shot at a berth at the Sept. 3 and 4 world championships in Holland. Sirgy finished fourth in his group and advanced.

It all depends on who’s in your flight, how well you do, and how your equipment performs as you work your way through single buck, springboard chop, Stihl stock saw, standing block chop and the Hot Saw events, Sirguy said.

One of his advantages is that his strongest event is the standing block chop, which is the next-to-last event on the program.

“The wild card here at the Stihl Series, the Hot Saw, is the last event,” he said about the massive custom chainsaws powered by oversized motors. “And given that it’s a power saw event … power saw events are more equalizing to some degree.

“There are definitely people with some stronger motors, but there are people who may have some problems with their saws. Hot saws are very sensitive to temperature and humidity. You have them dialed in very precisely.

“And maybe coming from across the country, maybe your saw won’t work under these weather conditions as well as it did for the weather conditions that you have back home.”

“So there’s always problems, and then there’s always the element of competition and the pressure that happens with that when you’re on this level.

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