Its report says that logging companies have been granted more than 60% of the country's rainforests in the six years since Nobel Prize winner Ellen Johnson Sirleaf became president.

 

It found that use of private contracts which bypass（绕开，忽视） regulations are common.

 

President Sirleaf has already ordered a investigation² into the issue.

 

She had been praised for revoking³ corrupt⁴ and badly managed logging companies when she took office in 2006, after timber was used to finance（负担经费） arms sales during Liberia's long and bloody⁵ civil war.

 

The West African nation still has some of the largest areas of rainforest in the region, but Global Witness alleges⁶ that nearly a quarter of Liberia's landmass has been signed to logging companies using secret and often illegal permits.

 

 

It says that some logging companies are signing Private Use Permits (PUPs), which were designed to allow private land owners to cut trees on their property, in order to get round legislation.

 

"It seems to be logging companies in Liberia acting⁷ with a number of mid-level Liberian government officials in one way or another and in some cases through fraudulent documentation to gain as much forest as possible, and cynically⁸ do it in the name of people who live in the forests," said Jonathan Gant, policy advisor⁹ at Global Witness.

 

Local activists¹⁰ first raised concerns in June 2011, and the Liberian government put a moratorium¹¹（暂停，中止） on PUPs in February - although it does not appear to have fully¹² stopped the practice.

 

President Sirleaf ordered a full-scale investigation last week and suspended a government official.

 

Liberian Information Minister Lewis Brown told the BBC: "We don't want to even imagine that government officials and authorities assigned specific duties would undertake to do something else. It is frankly¹³ mindboggling."

 

He said that PUPs had been designed for non-commercial purposes, such as farmers with small areas of land - not major international logging firms.

 

"What we're finding out sadly is that the community is not benefiting, the government is not getting the taxes it requires. But more than that the guys are spreading out into the countryside and engage in massive deforestation and this was never the intention."

 

Silas Siakor of the Sustainable Development Institute commented: "If Liberia's forests and the people who depend upon them are not to be swallowed whole by Private Use Permits then the suspension of logging operations must stand this time and a comprehensive independent investigation must be undertaken."

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