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Brazilian
Mahogany: Too Much In Demand --- Illegal Logging, Exports Are Lucrative
for Criminals, Disastrous for Rain Forest
By Miriam Jordan.
The Wall Street Journal.
(Eastern edition)
.Nov 14, 2001. pg. B.1
IN THE MIDDLE of the showroom
at The Woods Fine Furniture in Colts Neck, N.J., stands a $16,000
solid-mahogany dining table that seats 14 people. Carole Vanwickle says
she has sold several this year, and "nobody asks where the wood came
from."
Environmental activists say it's about time U.S. consumers started caring
about the origins of this fine, reddish wood. If the timber is from the
Brazilian Amazon rain forest -- and chances are that it is -- it most
likely was illegally logged and exported.
Now, in a highly unusual move, Brazil has suspended all trade in mahogany.
The government's decision late last month follows a two-year investigation
by Greenpeace using ground, air and satellite surveillance to document
rampant illegal logging on Indian reservations and other protected
wildlife areas. Greenpeace lists some 70 companies, mostly in the U.S.,
that allegedly purchase illegal mahogany. "However unwittingly,
manufacturers and retailers in North America, Europe and Japan are aiding
and abetting high-level crime," the Greenpeace report says.
Brazil's crackdown on the illegal mahogany trade involves hundreds of
federal police, forest agents and Greenpeace activists combing vast tracts
of the Amazon in helicopters, planes and boats. Authorities have raided
clandestine mills and lumber yards deep in the forest, often encountering
gunmen hired by mahogany kingpins, and have seized timber valued in the
millions of dollars.
"Those operating with illegal mahogany are working against the forest and
its indigenous peoples," says Hamilton Casara, president of Brazil's
environmental watchdog, Ibama. "The government is clear -- we want to put
an end to the extraction of illegal mahogany."
Brazil permits mahogany logging in designated areas, and exports
ostensibly require documentation from Ibama and additional paperwork in
accordance with the Convention on International Trade in Endangered
Species. But loggers routinely falsify authorization papers and the origin
of their mahogany, much of which comes from unlicensed zones, the
government says. "This is organized crime, and U.S. consumers are
unknowingly fueling it," says Scott Paul, Greenpeace's forest campaigner
in Washington, D.C.
The mahogany trade is nearly as old as Europe's 15th-century colonization
of the Caribbean, Central and South America, where it is known as the
"green gold" of the Amazon. It is coveted for its appearance, durability
and malleability, which enable craftsmen to carve it into the smallest,
intricate jewelry box or a majestic four-poster. In recent years, it has
become popular for flooring and outdoor decks.
Whatever its ultimate use, mahogany fetches top dollar on international
markets. Wood from one tree alone can produce $130,000 of furniture, based
on retail prices at high-end stores. Small wonder, then, that loggers
often bulldoze roads through virgin jungle to reach a single mahogany
tree. "Only cocaine has a multiplier effect on such a scale," says Paulo
Adario, chief of Greenpeace in the Amazon, who has government-supplied
bodyguards after he received death threats related to the mahogany report.
The Forest Stewardship Council, an international body that promotes
environmentally sound logging, has certified mahogany operations in Mexico
and Central America but not yet in Brazil. Only one Brazilian group has
applied for FSC certification.
Brazil has been the biggest source of the wood, supplying about 95% of all
U.S. mahogany imports, according to Traffic, the trade-monitoring arm of
the World Wide Fund for Nature. Traffic says that the U.S. imported $56
million of mahogany in 1998, the most recent year for which it has
figures. Brazil's suspension of the mahogany trade hasn't had a noticeable
impact on U.S. retail prices.
Stores like The Woods Fine Furniture buy their mahogany pieces from
furniture makers. (The Woods Fine Furniture says it has no idea where the
wood in the mahogany items it sells comes from.) The manufacturers get the
lumber from importers like DLH Nordisk Inc. of Greensboro, N.C. DLH, one
of the companies listed in the Greenpeace report, said in a statement that
it's "appalled" by the report's revelations and that it supports the new
Brazilian initiative to halt illegal mahogany logging. "DLH will only buy
wood if it is accompanied by the necessary legal documentation," says the
company's president, Stewart Sexton.
Greenpeace says that DLH supplies mahogany to prestigious furniture makers
including Ethan Allen Interiors Inc., LifeStyle International Furnishings
and L. & J.G. Stickley. DLH's Mr. Sexton declines to disclose clients'
names.
LifeStyle International, whose upmarket brands include Henredon, Drexel
Heritage and Lexington Home, says that it gets Brazilian mahogany from
three or four U.S. dealers, including DLH. "They assured us that they have
licenses for what they import," says Andy Kelly, director of purchasing.
"We have these assurances in writing and take them for their word."
In response to questions, Kelly Maicon, a spokeswoman for Ethan Allen,
issued a statement saying that since 1997 it has been policy at the
Darien, Conn., company to work toward eliminating the use of Brazilian
mahogany and that none is currently being purchased. She declined to
explain why. Stickley owners Alfred and Aminy Audi issued a statement
saying: "The Brazilian mahogany we use is bought from lumber suppliers who
respect and abide by the environmental legislation of the Brazilian
government."
Brazil authorizes mahogany logging in only 13 areas, some of which are the
size of Connecticut. But licensees often operate outside of these zones,
according to the Greenpeace report and the government.
Mahogany's scarcity has led loggers deeper into the Amazon and onto
indigenous tribal lands, where logging is prohibited. Human-rights groups
say that an unknown number of Indians in Para state have been killed
resisting logging. But in a pattern that has led to other abuses of the
rain forest, some Indian tribes without other means of income allow
illegal logging in return for money to buy food and medicine. The payoff
is as little as $30 per tree, Greenpeace says, but that was enough for
members of the Kaiapo tribe, traditionally warriors, to paint themselves
red recently in protest against the government's crackdown on mahogany
logging.
Disbanding Brazil's illegal mahogany operations won't be easy. Loggers
have foiled previous efforts to regulate the mahogany trade. To combat
corruption among government inspectors, Brazil is creating mixed teams of
state officials, Greenpeace activists and university researchers.
"It has been difficult to prove that mahogany logs floating down the river
were extracted from protected forest, even though we are absolutely
certain that the wood couldn't be coming from an authorized area," says
federal prosecutor Ubiratan Cazetta. Still, he expects soon to have enough
evidence to revoke operating licenses, as well as press criminal charges.
"There has never been an operation on such a large scale," says Mr.
Cazetta. "It's a new moment for the mahogany trade and the forest." |
