More than 80 people, including some government officials, have been given disciplinary sanctions or penal punishment for being responsible for 10 major forest destruction cases.

Besides, the violators were fined for nearly 33 million yuan (US$4 million) for forest restoration, said Lei Jiafu, deputy director of the State Forestry Administration (SFA) on Thursday.

The SFA released a blacklist of 10 major cases of forest destruction since 2003 and launched a 75-day-long national campaign to crack down on deforestation with the Ministry of Public Security (MOPS) to "clean up" all the major cases of deforestation.

The 10 violators are accused of stealing forestland for building railways, highways, reservoirs and mines or poaching endangered wildlife. The SFA has set up special work teams to promote and supervise the investigation and handling of the cases, said Lei.

In addition to the 10 major cases, the SFA and the MOPS dealt with another 76,000 cases related to forest destruction in the campaign with more than 73,000 people involved punished, said Lei, adding that governmental efforts to curb illegal logging have shifted from individual violators to violations by businesses and the government.

During the period from 1999 to 2003, more than 10 million hectares of forestland were misused and the annual illegally-logged timber volume exceeded 75 million cubic meters, SFA statistics show.

Local governments' ineffective supervision of the forestry department were blamed as the major reasons for increasing deforestation violations in recent years.

In addition, an imprecise legal system of forest resources management and protection provides loopholes for illegal activities, said Wang Zhuxiong, deputy director of the SFA's Forest Resources Management Department.

To tackle the problem, SFA has started to work out a special layout on forest management and protection to avoid the misuse of forests.

(Xinhua News Agency July 29, 2005)