S AMLING says it hasn't yet logged a single tree from its 787,000-hectare

government concession - but someone has.

In a recent report to the

Ministry of Agriculture's Forestry Department, the company claimed that almost

50 per cent of the concession has already been logged "anarchically".

The

report said Samling wanted its concession extended to ensure that its logging,

when it began, was sustainable.

The report said that satellite

photographs were taken of its concession area by a Landsat Aerial reconnaissance

survey in January.

When the photographs were compared with the results of

"ground investigation and inventory sampling" conducted between April and June,

some 327,050 hectares of the concession could be seen to have been stripped of

trees by unknown people.

Samling said that because of the size of the

illegally-logged areas, extra hectares would need to be made available to it for

logging, in order to maintain sustainable supplies of timber for its processing

factories.