Deforestation is another major environmental issue in Laos. Although the official export of timber is tightly controlled, no-one really knows how much teak and other hardwoods are being smuggled into Vietnam, Thai­land and especially China. The policy in northern Laos has been to allow the Chinese to take as much timber as they want in return for building roads. The Lao army is still removing huge chunks of forest in Khammuan Province and from remote areas in the country's far south, near the Se Pian and Dong Hua Sao NPAs, much of it going to Vietnam. The national electricity-generating company also profits from the timber sales each time it links a Lao town or village with the national power grid, clear-cutting a wider-than-necessary swathe along Lao highways.

Essentially, the Lao authorities express a seemingly sincere desire to conserve the nation's forests - but not at the cost of rural livelihoods. In most rural areas 70% of non-rice foods come from the forest. Thus forest destruction, whether as a result of logging or dam-building, will lead to increased poverty and reduced local livelihoods.

Other pressures on the forest cover come from swidden (slash-and-burn) methods of cultivation, in which small plots of forest are cleared, burnt for nitrogenation of the soil, and farmed intensively for two or three years, after which they are infertile and unfarmable for between eight and 10 years. Considering the sparse population, swidden cultivation is prob­ably not as great an environmental threat as logging. But neither is it an efficient use of resources.

Forestry per se is not all bad, and effective management could maintain Laos's forests as a source of income for a long time to come. Creating NPAs has been a good start, but examples of forest regeneration and even planting high-value trees for future harvest are rare. All too often the name of the game is short-term gain.