GUEST EDITORIAL: Has REDUCED-IMPACT LOGGING outlived its USEFULNESS?

I don’t know who coined the term ‘reduced-impact logging’ and its acronym RIL. The first time I heard it was in connection with a pioneering reduced-impact logging project initiated in 1992 by the Sabah Foundation’s Innoprise Corporation on a forest management unit of its timber concession in the north of Tawau, Sabah. The project was made possible with financial support from New England Electric System (NEES), an electricity-generating company based in Massachusetts, USA. NEES regarded the project as a way to gain experience with carbon-offset forestry. The principle focus of research related to the project, carried out by Jack Putz and Michelle Pinard of the University of Florida, was on that particular aspect of reduced-impact logging(Putz Pinard 1993).