Word: hardwood
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WHAT has been the impact of massive infusion of chemical herbicides onto the land and people of Vietnam? In purely statistical terms, the quantity of herbicides dumped is frightening: one sixth of the surface area of Vietnam has been sprayed. There has been major destruction of mangrove forests, hardwood forests, and croplands, with consequent economic and social disruptions-many of which will last for years to come...
Herbicide use for crop destruction has continued this year in contrast tomangrove and hardwood forest destruction, which have been ordered stopped. The HAC estimated 2,000 square kilometers of cropland were sprayed, which amounts to five per cent of the cropland in South Vietnam. From the HAC report again: "It has been authoritatively estimated that this entailed the destruction of enough food to feed approximately 600,000 persons for a year. Our observations in Vietnam lead us to believe that precautions to avoid destroying the crops of indigenous civilian populations have been a failure and that nearly...
...Hardwood forests of some kind cover nearly 90 per cent of South Vietnam. Mature forests of economically valuable hardwood cover about 50,000 square kilometers. Through 1969, the HAC estimates 13,500 square kilometers were sprayed, with a third of that being sprayed more than once...
From the HAC preliminary report: "Approximately one-fifth of South Vietnam's merchantable hardwood forests have been sprayed, including many of the oldest and most valuable stands. Aerial inspection of forests in a wide are north of Saigon extending from the Cambodian frontier in the west to the South China Sea on the east showed more than half of the forest to be very severely damaged. Over large areas, most of the trees appeared dead and bamboo had spread over the ground. A danger in this is that the invading bamboo species may be essentially worthless and very expensive...
...Hardwood forest spraying, then, has seriously reduced South Vietnam's economic forestry resources, with effects to be felt for many more years. The forests are relatively unpopulated, so there should be little direct effect on human life from the hardwood destruction...