While the video vigilance enabled by the project has clearly been effective, activism against illegal logging may also have some unintended consequences. For example, some Indonesian civil society groups are worried that the government, pressed to make some response to illegal logging, may target small-scale community-based loggers, as opposed to larger operations with deeper political and business ties. Some of these small-scale operators claim indigenous rights to forest resources, but their harvest is still considered illegal. For this reason, the wider discussion about illegal logging at a national level has incorporated debate about indigenous rights and tenure (Anderson and Hidayat 2004:3; Astraatmaja 2005; Currey 2005).

In addition, while by far the biggest slice of income from illegal logging is taken by middlemen and timber traders, many poor villagers working on illegal logging crews have benefited from the income it brings. Although the work is often dangerous, it may be more economically attractive than other more sustainable activities—at least for the short time that marketable trees are still available. In 2000, as many as 300 illegal sawmills were estimated to be active in Central Kalimantan alone, giving some idea of the size of the temporary logging economy in that region (Casson 2000:16). In the midst of a logging boom, the web of people drawing income from the logging effort—which includes a variety of jobs from felling, to transport, to milling—may reach well into rural communities (McCarthy 2002:876). Working against illegal logging, then, may cut income for some.

On the other hand, Dave Currey of the Environmental Investigation Agency maintains that any loss of income from shutting down illegal logging pales by comparison to the loss of livelihoods that such illegal operations cause over the longer term. The bigger picture issue, he says, “is that illegal logging is causing widespread poverty—as the DfID Multi-Stakeholder Program explicitly recognizes” (Currey 2004).