11/18/01 -- Illegally Cut Mahogany from Brazil Finds Home in Furniture

Illegally Cut Mahogany from Brazil Finds Home in Furniture

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 United States 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 United States, 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.

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.

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.

Brazil has been the biggest source of the wood, supplying about 95 percent of all United States mahogany imports, according to Traffic, the trade-monitoring arm of the World Wide Fund for Nature. Traffic says the United States 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 United States 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.

Disbanding Brazil's illegal mahogany operations won't be easy.

"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 Cazetta. "It's a new moment for the mahogany trade and the forest." Error: Unable to read footer file.