Myanmar: Deforestation Spreads as Timber Demand Soars

May 7, 2014 | The Myanmar Times
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Ashen earth strewn with the limbs of once-mighty trees is all that is left of the fearsome forest in central Myanmar that Wa Tote remembers from her youth.

"We would only dare enter in a big group. The forest was deep and had many wild animals. Now we cannot even find a tree's shadow to shelter under when we are tired," the 72-year-old told AFP.

At one point tigers were so common in the area that their bones were traded cheaply. Now they have vanished into memory.

Large swathes of the undulating landscape of the Bago mountains have been stripped bare by logging firms over recent years and the last remnants of wood are being burnt.