PORT MORESBY, AAP - In Port Moresby harbour a giant barge full of illegal logging equipment has slowly rusted over the past four years.
Like many things in PNG it is big, ugly and ignored.
The Malaysian owners arrived in late 2005 with 17 bulldozers, a 40t log loader; two 20t excavators; a large fuel tanker; nine log jinkers, four generator sets; three containers and some Toyota utilities.
They had PNG business partners and the necessary permits to log forests as part of their oil palm farm in PNG's Central Province.
But as doubts about the project mounted, authorities eventually raided the project site where they did not find one oil palm seedling, according to the Papua New Guinea Forest Authority, a government body.
Impounded by the government, the barge and tools were left to rust.
Meanwhile, in PNG's Western Province, the Department of Lands approved a road but this was later stopped by the Forest Authority.
Road construction allows for a 20 metre corridor of deforestation.
Malaysian logging company Concord Pacific extended the corridor to approximately a kilometre wide and then wanted to build 800km of road through a spidery network. The plan was stopped.
It is an example of "logging by stealth" through land permit loopholes that are costing the country millions of hectares of forest every year, according to Paul Barker, director of the Institute of National Affairs, an independent think tank, and Bob Taite, executive officer of the PNG Forestry Industries Association (FIA), a logging industry representative body.
FIA reported that in the past 18 months 1.2 million hectares of PNG's forests have already been cut down under special permits.
"It's a mystery who all these players are and their intent. But from past experience much of it will be for logging, sidestepping the requirements of the Forestry Act," he said.
"Small groups of supposed landowners or agents purporting to represent the entire community strike the deals most often with none of the necessary informed consent."
PNG's Forestry Act section 90 allows for deforestation for agricultural projects or roads if approved by another relevant department, such as the Department of Agriculture and Livestock.
The Lands Act also allows for deforestation if it meets the requirements for an agro-business lease.
Unscrupulous operators apply through these provisions to build, for example, oil palm farms or roads for landowners. Then they cut down the forest, export the logs and leave.
David Melick from WWF in PNG said these special permits had developed into a massive problem.
"A lot of these land conversion projects are actually really bad logging situations where they virtually clear fell, which is worse than PNG's selective logging policy," said Mr Melick.
"It's a sleeper issue that doesn't get the publicity unsustainable commercial logging gets but in many ways it could be worse.