"Forestry and mining are our major resources. No other part of the economy works right now," Jovo Dabic, chief of logging operations in the northwestern town of Novi Grad, told AFP.

"During the (1992-95) war we could not exploit much, so now we can cut more forest," he said as forestry workers around him were cutting beech forest that took up to 80 years to grow.

Bosnia has the fourth-largest forest reserve in Europe. Some 45 percent of its territory is covered with forests, while timber tops the list of a few products that the Balkans country is exporting.

However, Bosnia exports mostly raw wood, instead of manufactured furniture which would create a much higher profit, and the industry is slow to move from the deadlock that was put into during the war.

It is estimated that only some eight percent of Bosnia's overall pre-war production has been recovered.

"For every 5,000 workers employed in logging, some 25,000 should be employed in the related industry," Dabic said.

"Unfortunately forest industry is hardly operative in Bosnia, can you imagine what it would mean for employment here if it was."

Unemployment in Bosnia stands at some 40 percent.

Vladimir, who had to move over 100 kilometres (62 miles) from his hometown of Kotor Varos, came to the village Suhaca, near Novi Grad, to find his first employment -- as a wood-cutter where he earns 255 euros (308 dollars) monthly through hard work and sweat.

"I could not find a job near home, so I came here," the 20-year-old said.

In the Suhaca forestry farm all resources are at hand to help achieve faster exploitation -- workers with chainsaws and axes, bulldozers to drag fallen trees out of the forest, while in inaccessible zones horses are used to drag trees to the nearest logging paths.

"There is so much forest that we can exploit it endlessly," said Dabic.

But experts in forestry and ecology warn that something should be done immediately to prevent further heavy logging because it could change the country's climate.

Experts also warn that recovery of woods cut in the past decade will last between 80 and 150 years.

"Since the war ended we had uncontrolled massive logging and opening of new sawmills," Ljiljana Dosenovic, of the Banja Luka faculty of forestry, warned.

"Apart from frantic logging, exploiters leave a mess in forests that is increasing diseases."

According to Viktor Bjelic, a coordinator of Eko Mreza BiH, a local environmental protection association, direct damage from uncontrolled logging during the past decade is estimated at some two billion euros.

"The current situation is alarming," Bjelic stressed pointing to other damages such as soil erosion, pollution and loss of water.

Official figures show that some five million cubic meters (175 million cubic feet) of forest are cut per year, but the problem is that there is a lot of illegal logging.

"The fact that we have sawmills with three times higher capacities to process wood than it is officially allowed to be cut tells us that two times more than allowed is cut without being registered," said Srdjan Blagovcanin, spokesman of Bosnia's branch of the graft watchdog Transparency International (TI).

In Bosnia there are some 1,800 private sawmills, only a third of which are legal.

"People who are behind all this should be held responsible. It is strange that only 'small fish' tree-poachers have been tried, while key people remain unpunished," he said.

According to TI's information "money from illegal logging poured into funds of political parties and private pockets," Blagovcanin stressed without elaborating.