The United Nations Food and Agriculture organization (FAO, the UN organization that tracks deforestation of the world’s forests) has stated that 70% of tropical deforestation from agricultural clearing is precipitated by logging and, to a lesser degree, mining roads. Seventy percent. This startling figure is due to the fact that loggers, with money from timber importers in rich industrialized countries, are able to purchase the heavy equipment needed to bulldoze roads into pristine and otherwise inaccessible rainforests. Once there, these roads are used by shifting cultivators — many of whom are landless — to gain access to these forests, clear the remaining trees and start farming.

Further, FAO considers “deforestation” to be the total elimination of tree cover. However, much of the destruction of these forests from logging is not total but partial. Loggers don’t usually clearcut in the tropics. Instead, the usual method is called "high-grading", where only the most valuable trees are first targeted. But, to get at these trees, the loggers will destroy as many as 28 trees for every one targeted. Roads are bulldozed, skid trails cut, and trees around the one they have cut, connected by strong vines, are brought down as these giants fall.

This peripheral damage can reduce the canopy by as much as 50%. While this is devastating to the forests ecological integrity, it’s not considered “deforestation” by FAO and therefore is missed in their statistical analyses. Also, this damage is not revealed by satellite imagery.

Scientists with various organizations have shown that deforestation figures in the Amazon should be doubled to account for the damage from logging
(see the article).

So in reality, logging may account for as much as 25% of the destruction of rainforests plus, in many areas, it sets the stage for the final coup de grace of total deforestation.

Most of the logging done by those loggers bulldozing new roads into formerly pristine rainforests is done to feed the demand for export timber, with the majority of the resultant lumber, plywood, panels, furniture and flooring being shipped to northern industrialized countries. Species like mahogany, okoume, ramin, keruing, jatoba and ipê are in high demand in the US, Europe and Japan for plywood, furniture, flooring, decking, pilings, paneling, doors, dowels and tool handles.

Reducing the demand by 90% is necessary to slow the logging enough to spare these forests. The remaining demand must be limited to only logs, lumber and products from secondary forests that have been independently certified, accredited by the international Forest Stewardship Council.

This will serve to eliminate rapacious and illegal logging, often the majority of the source of the trade from tropical countries (see What to Avoid, By Country).