Burma Corporation Clear-Cutting Forest in Key Tiger Reserve, Report Says

A powerful Burma real estate developer is continuing to clear-cut forests in a region of Kachin State recently declared the world’s largest tiger reserve, according to a new report. A coalition of organizations promoting sustainable development, the Kachin Development Networking Group, says in its report that Yuzana Company is still bulldozing trees to establish sugar and tapioca plantations and plant jatropha to be used as biofuel. The chairman of Yuzana is U Htay Myint, a prominent businessman with close ties to the government of Burma, also known as Myanmar. “Today, a 200,000-acre mono-crop plantation project is making a mockery of the reserve’s protected status,” the report says. According to the report, local farmers are being forcibly removed from their land to make room for the plantations. The tiger reserve was first established in the Hukawng Valley in 2001.