Even before a report came out Tuesday alleging that illicit deals gave a quarter of all of Liberia to foreign logging companies, Liberia’s president suspended her forestry chief and promised to investigate.

President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf tried to get ahead of the report, which alleges that the country's "private use permits" have been usurped over the last two years to allow commercial logging. 

"The private use permits have been considered in the past to assist communities in terms of job creation, in terms of support and benefit, but the truth is, we are finding out also, that it has been abused and it is unacceptable," Liberian Information Minister Lewis Brown said in comments reported by The Associated Press on Tuesday.

Moreover, the head of Liberia's Forestry Authority, Moses Wogbeh, is under investigation into an allegation that he violated a moratorium on land permits for commercial logging, presidential spokesman Jerolinmek Piah told The Associated Press on Monday.  

Wogbeh was suspended from his post over the weekend and Liberia said it would bar illegally-logged timber from being exported. 

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The advocacy groups Global Witness, Save My Future Foundation and Sustainable Development Institute produced the report.

"A quarter of Liberia's total landmass has been granted to logging companies in just two years, following an explosion in the use of secretive and often illegal logging permits," the groups said in a statement.

Corruption is seen as a big obstacle to development in Liberia, which remains one of the world's least developed countries nearly a decade after the end of a 14-year civil war.

The government has been struggling to clarify land ownership issues across its vast forested zones, traditionally divided along ethnic lines.

Global Witness said about 26,000 square kilometers of land had been granted to timber companies through at least 66 private use permits -- lightly regulated deals between timber companies and private land owners.

It said many of the deals made with individuals said to own the land were backed by land deeds held in the collective name of people of a district or clan who had little knowledge of the accords and would reap little benefit from the timber exported.

The advocacy group added that some of the deals appeared to have been backed by forged documents. "When presented with a letter written in his name submitting his people's deed to the government, a Paramount Chief (clan chief) from the Dugbeh River Private Use Permit area in Sinoe County told us that the letter was forged," Global Witness said.

Land deeds in Liberia require a presidential signature.

In another deal, Global Witness said, the deed bore the signature of former President Edwin Barclay, but was dated six years before he came to power.

Johnson Sirleaf, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last year for her work for women's rights, has been facing growing criticism for failing to root out government-level corruption as the country begins potentially lucrative iron ore exports and explores for oil offshore.

Last month she suspended her son from his position as Deputy Central Bank Governor as well as 45 other government officials for failing to declare their assets to anti-corruption authorities, a move observers said was intended to show she is serious about fighting graft.

The president has been criticized for nominating three sons to high level posts in her administration - the one at the central bank, one at the national oil company, and one at the head of the country's national security agency.

Logging has been a controversial issue in Liberia since the civil war, when rebels used proceeds from timber to purchase weapons, triggering a U.N. ban. The ban was lifted after Liberia's foreign partners, particularly the United States and the World Bank, helped it reform its forestry laws. 

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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SINGAPORE -- In the two minutes it takes to read this story, an area the size of 60 football fields will have been clear-cut by illegal loggers globally, according to Chatham House, an independent policy institute in London.

Catching the loggers and their bosses has long been a problem because of corruption, lax law enforcement and limited ability to detect the crime quickly.

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Satellite monitoring is changing that. Powerful eyes in the sky and cheaper and more powerful data-crunching computers mean there will be no place to hide for palm oil, logging or mining firms that clear without permits or outside their concessions.

Higher resolution satellite imaging and near-real time analysis will mean investors, green groups, law enforcement agencies and the public can monitor any patch of forest.

Washington-based World Resources Institute plans to launch an upgraded version of Global Forest Watch, a free Web-based service, either later this year or early in 2013.

Using a NASA satellite, the service will focus on tropical areas of the globe with an image resolution of 500 meters by 500 meters every 16 days.

Study: Wildlife vanishing at 'staggering rate' in Brazil forests

Users can choose an area of interest and be alerted by e-mail about any changes in tree cover.

The Global Forest Watch tool, supported by Google and the University of Maryland among others, will also contain data about logging or agricultural licenses and their owners, protected areas, infrastructure and other details.

Due diligence
For investors such as banks or private equity firms, the tool can be used for due diligence to check up on a potential acquisition such as an Indonesian palm oil firm, to make sure it is on the right side of the law, said Nigel Sizer, director of WRI's Forests Initiative. Similarly, international food companies can make sure their palm oil suppliers are environmentally compliant.

PhotoBlog: Calif. environmentalists say logging burned forest near Tahoe threatens rare bird

Forest and conservation news site Mongabay.com recently launched a free deforestation tracker using NASA satellite data. It issues an alert if green cover in an area being tracked changes by more than 40 percent over a year.

Another service, Terra-i, offers free high-resolution forest cover analysis for all of Latin America.

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Thomson Reuters subsidiary Lanworth offers detailed deforestation analysis by area, time and forest type. Their work was central to a Reuters investigation last month into illegal clearing by a palm oil firm in Borneo.

Sizer said within five years, micro satellites with 5 to 10 meters resolution will deliver real-time imaging to rapidly detect any changes in forest cover. In a decade, high-resolution video would likely be available.

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The death of an ancient cedar tree inside a remote park on Canada's Vancouver Island is being showcased by an environmental group seeking more protection against illegal loggers.

The 800-year-old tree was attacked by poachers with power saws over time at Carmanah Walbran Provincial Park, the Wilderness Committee reported Thursday. Cedar is valuable as material for roofing shingles.

The poachers, still at large, were able to cut through 80 percent of the base of the tree -- which had a diameter of nine feet -- before park staff finally noticed what was going on, Wilderness Committee campaigner Torrance Coste told msnbc.com. The damage was so severe that park staff had to fell the entire tree for safety reasons.

The park left the fallen tree at the site so that it could decompose, returning nutrients to the soil, Coste said, but since then poachers "have returned at their leisure without fear of consequence and cut up, hauled out, and taken away the tree in sections.

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"This has required seriously heavy equipment," he added. "The area has been trashed, and there are huge steel cables lying around all over the place ... sections of the trunk have been removed up until as recently as two weeks ago."

The Wilderness Committee urged British Columbia, which incorporates Vancouver Island, to beef up funding for park rangers. 

"While the poachers themselves have obviously committed a terrible crime, fault for this incident should also lay with the Ministry of Environment and their long-time negligence of our parks," Coste said. 

The controversy has reached British Columbia's government, with the opposition New Democrat Party criticizing the Liberal Party government, The Canadian Press reported. 

"To suggest that anyone is able to protect all of those areas to the level that the member suggests is fiscally irresponsible," responded Environment Minister Terry Lake.

"I'll tell you what irresponsible is," countered New Democrat Scott Fraser, "10 years ago there were 194 park rangers in British Columbia, there's under 100 now."

The Wilderness Committee, for its part, also fears illegal logging of cedar might be happening elsewhere on Vancouver Island. 

“What we need to know" from the environment ministry "is if cedar poaching is happening anywhere else," Coste said.

A parks official said investigators have little information to work with.

"We have no eyewitnesses or license plates," Don Closson told the Canadian Press.

A police officer echoed the lack of evidence, adding that the poachers were likely after the cedar for roofing shingles.

"It's obviously much more gain than going out and taking a whole pile of firewood," Sgt. Dave Voller told the Canadian Press. "A logging truck loaded with cedar would be worth thousands and thousands of dollars."

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