A Man Has a Plan To Harvest a Forest In Ghanaian Lake

The technical challenges involved in the harvesting of deep underwater timber are considerable. The costs of overcoming these challenges may well exceed the value of the timber being harvested.

- economic of interest - socio economic of interest - ecological of interest

Wood quality should be fine if handled properly on exposure to the air.  There is plenty of experience of harvesting swamp buried timber in NZ. Existing technology can be modified for such lake harvesting. Because of water displacement, the weight of trees underwater is considerably less than weight of the same sized trees in the air. Environmental concerns expressed in the article are lacking...

American consumers are asking for more choices in wood flooring. “Anything but oak" means an increased demand for exotic woods from rare, slow growing trees. Finding sources such as old buildings or lake bottoms avoids cutting down live trees and, therefore, is encouraged by most environmentalist. If the logs remain very cold in the water, they can be recovered without structural deterioration. Moisture...

Mr. Dunn’s project of underwater logging in Ghana has two phases. If the initial testing and development phase proves that the project can be a viable business, total private investment is expected to be well over $50 million. Such investors as former Canadian Prime Minister Joe Clark, Goldman Sachs and British Columbia's Salman Partners Inc. have gambled $14 million that he can both assuage environmental...

Harvesting tropical hardwoods which have been submerged for 40 years may be environmentally beneficial but is this overshadowing the commercial considerations? Three Main Points: 1. Was nothing learned from the abandoned Camaroons pulp mill project that cost investors $250 million dollars? 2. To be commercially successful, logs must be processed - debarked and either sawn, chipped or made into veneer...

- opposition from some environmental groups is inevitable - the quality of the wood after 40 years under water needs sampling and careful analysis - expect the operation to be slower than expected