Mahogany Tree's Survival in Doubt Due to U.S. Demand
10/04/00
OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY
by Forests.org
Commercial logging of mahogany is a major catalyst for increased neo- tropical deforestation, and threatens the existence of the magnificent mahogany tree. If mahogany is cut at its current rate without efforts to harvest the wood sustainably, big-leafed mahogany is likely to become endangered with a high risk of extinction. The United States accounts for 60 percent of the global mahogany trade, driving the unsustainable harvest of lucrative mahogany trees. The desire for conspicuous consumption of luxury goods, such as those made from mahogany timbers, must not be allowed to endanger the world's species and ecosystems upon which all live depends. Mahogany and the ecosystems it occupies must be granted immediate strict protection, and financial resources made available to offset incurred economic losses by developing countries.
g.b.
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Mahogany Tree's Survival in Doubt Due to U.S. Demand
(c) Environment News Service (ENS) 2000
September 28, 2000
WASHINGTON, D.C., September 28, 2000 (ENS) - Without increased import tariffs, consumer education and international protection, one of South America's biggest trees will become endangered, in turn harming the plant and animal species it supports, said a report released Wednesday.
Demand in the United States for big leaf mahogany threatens some of the world's most biologically diverse Amazonian rainforests, according to the report from TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring program of World Wildlife Fund and IUCN-The World Conservation Union.
"Mahogany is often considered the Rolls Royce of trees, but if we aren't careful, it may become the Edsel - commercially unviable and threatened with extinction," said Chris Robbins, author of "Mahogany Matters: The U.S. Market for Big Leafed Mahogany and its Implications for the Conservation of the Species."
"All of the data we analyzed point to a not too distant future in which we could harvest big leafed mahogany out of commercial existence," said Robbins.
Big leaf mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla) is a tropical tree species whose range extends through 13 Latin American countries, from Brazil and Bolivia to Mexico. The largest area of naturally occurring mahogany is in the Brazilian rainforests of the Amazon basin.
The tree is distributed sparsely throughout the forest, occurring either as single trees or in small clusters. Densities of more than four to eight trees per hectare are rarely found naturally. Overall density of intermediate sized trees of this species is rarely more then one tree per hectare.
The big leaf mahogany tree takes about 100 years to mature and is a magnificent deciduous timber tree with an umbrella shaped crown reaching 35 to 40 meters (114 to 130 feet) tall, often emerging above the dense rainforest canopy.
It is known for its incredible beauty and durability, its distinctive grain, and smoothness and patina found in no other wood. Like other species of mahogany, it is used for high class furniture, fine joinery and panelling.
But its economic value pales compared to its ecological worth, argue environmentalists, who point to the multitude of plant and animal species it supports, as well as the healthy local economies it sustains.
Demand has exhausted Caribbean mahogany, which is now considered endangered, and supplies in Central America are dwindling. As the tree disappears from these areas, so harvesting has increased in the tropical forests of Peru and Brazil, some of the most ecologically diverse areas in the world.
Unless demand is checked, big leafed mahogany could disappear, too, warns Robbins. If this happens, the incentives for sustainable management of high value timber species will be lost.
Roads designed for felling high value trees like mahogany allow access to migrating farmers who convert the forests to farmland, increasing the loss of plant and animal species.
In Peru, Robbins says, the distance from mahogany forests to mills is increasing, indicating that forests are being "mined, not managed."
Efforts to regulate and protect big leaf mahogany without actually outlawing trade have proved fruitless. Three attempts to have the species listed on Appendix II of CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) failed in the 1990s.
CITES is an international mechanism for the maintenance of biodiversity through the regulation of international trade of wild species. A listing of mahogany on Appendix II would force exporting countries to demonstrate that exported mahogany had been obtained sustainably and legally.
Two other closely related mahogany species, Swietenia humilis and Swietenia mahagoni, were included in Appendix II at previous CITES conferences, but only Swietenia macrophylla now plays a significant role in international trade.
Several environmental groups contend that most mahogany in Latin America is harvested illegally. In 1997, they obtained some documentary evidence to back this claim.
During CITES 10th biannual meeting in Harare, Zimbabwe in June 1997, Brazilian newspaper "O Liberal," obtained a leaked report from the Brazilian government's own intelligence agency, the Secretariat for Strategic Affairs, confirming what groups like Friends of the Earth had always claimed, that 80 percent of timber extracted from the Brazilian Amazon comes from illegal sources.
In a secret ballot at the Harare meeting, 67 countries voted in favor of listing big leaf mahogany on Appendix II but 45 were opposed. The protective measure, which was backed by the U.S. and Bolivia, fell short of the requisite two-thirds majority by eight votes.
At the 1994 CITES conference in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, a similar proposal fell six votes shy of passage.
According to Friends of the Earth, the most vigorous opposition to the proposal to protect big leafed mahogany was conducted by the International Wood Products Association of the U.S., along with trade representatives from Bolivia, Brazil and the African Timber Organization.
Robbins' report maintains that a CITES listing is integral to the solutions for saving big leaf mahogany. He also recommends building greater awareness of sustainably managed forests among consumers, importers and governments so that they will demand and buy mahogany products that are certified environmentally friendly by the Forest Stewardship Council.
The council is an independent, non-profit, non-governmental organization. Led by the World Wide Fund for Nature, it was founded in 1993 by a diverse group of representatives from environmental and conservation groups, the timber industry, the forestry profession, indigenous peoples' organizations, community forestry groups and forest product certification organizations from 25 countries.
It accredits certifying organizations. They in turn certify forestry organizations that meet FSC developed Principles and Criteria and other specific standards identified at the national and/or regional levels.
Awareness campaigns have been particularly successful in the United Kingdom, the world's second largest importer of mahogany. Friends of the Earth UK's Mahogany is Murder campaign has seen the nation's mahogany imports drop by nearly 70 percent since the campaign's launch in 1992.
Robbins' report calls on the U.S. government to increase import tariffs on minimally processed mahogany from Latin America, which is currently exempt, while lowering or waiving duties on products of non-threatened tree species.
"Big leafed mahogany is a valuable component of many local economies and should continue being harvested," Robbins said. "It simply needs to be done in a more methodical fashion that ensures a long term supply and the survival of threatened and endangered species."
The report found that the United States accounts for 60 percent of the global mahogany trade. In 1998, about 57,000 big leafed mahogany trees were harvested and shipped to the U.S. to supply a booming business in mahogany furniture. That figure represents 57 percent by volume of U.S. imports of tropical hardwood lumber, worth about $56 million.
Thirty nine percent of the big leafed mahogany imported in the the U.S. goes to North Carolina. Mississippi is the next largest importer followed by Florida, Pennsylvania, Louisiana and California. Fifty percent of the big leafed mahogany imported into the U.S. comes from Brazil.
To read the full TRAFFIC report, visit
http://www.worldwildlife.org/forests/attachments/mahogany.pdf
ITEM #2
ENVIRONMENT: US Demand Threatens Tropical Tree's Survival
Copyright 2000 InterPress Service
September 27, 2000
By: Danielle Knight
WASHINGTON, Sep 27 (IPS) - Logging rates and practices of harvesting lucrative mahogany trees in the Amazon rainforests of Latin America, fuelled by demand in the United States, may push the species toward extinction, warn conservationists here.
Harvesting mahogany is a valuable component of many local Amazon economies and should continue, according to Chris Robbins, author of a new report released Wednesday by TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring project of World Wildlife Fund and the World Conservation Union (IUCN).
''It simply needs to be done in a more methodical fashion that ensures a long-term supply and the survival of threatened and endangered species,'' he says.
The United States accounts for 60 percent of the global mahogany trade, says the report. In 1998, the equivalent of about 57,000 mahogany trees, known as 'big-leafed mahogany'' was harvested and shipped to the United States to supply growing furniture industries in the states of North Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Pennsylvania, Louisiana and California.
Big-leafed mahogany trees account for 57 percent, by volume, of US imports of tropical hardwood lumber, worth about 56 million dollars.
European colonists beginning in the late 15th century once harvested a type of mahogany wood in Caribbean and Central America, but now that type has been virtually cleared from those regions. A similar mahogany species, the big-leafed variety, is currently being harvested mostly from the denser, tropical forests in Bolivia, Brazil and Peru, with some being harvested in Guatemala, Nicaragua and Belize.
Robbins warns that if mahogany is cut at its current rate without efforts to harvest the wood sustainably, big-leafed mahogany could suffer the same fate as the Caribbean mahogany.
''All of the data we analysed point to a not-too-distant future in which we could harvest big-leafed mahogany out of commercial existence,'' he says.
Mahogany in Latin America is harvested predominantly through the practice known as selective logging, in which only mahogany and other valuable timber species are extracted.
Biologists have long argued that this practice typically does not create conditions that foster regeneration and it results in removal of nearly all mature mahogany trees within a population, drastically reducing its ability to reproduce successfully.
In order to maintain production levels, loggers are continually moving into increasingly remote unlogged old-growth forests, rather than harvesting within set areas from regenerating stands of trees, said a letter sent to the US government last year by the Center for International Environmental Law and other ecological advocacy organisations.
Because of such logging methods and levels of logging, scientists say the population of mahogany are in decline.
Escalating retail prices for mahogany indicate that supplies of the wood are growing increasingly tight, according to the report. Prices are 25 percent higher today than a decade ago, it says.
Perhaps to avoid the financial costs and public pressure associated with big-leafed mahogany, US companies boosted their imports of mahogany from Africa from 4,100 cubic metres in 1991 to more than 20,000 cubic metres in 1998.
''The phenomenon of replacing increasingly costly or scarce American mahogany with more competitive timber species raises valid questions about whether, and to what degree, potentially heavier harvest of substitute tree species will alter their biological status or role in the ecosystem,'' says the 57-page report, Mahogany Matters.
Environmentalists have long warned that logging mahogany is a major catalyst for increased deforestation. As loggers expand operations into untouched forests and protected areas, road construction facilitates settlement by farmers and conversion of forests for ranching and agriculture, they say.
Some of the countries exporting mahogany have imposed logging moratoria and improved national legislation to protect mahogany. There has been a drop in US imports from Bolivia since the government implemented restrictions to reduce mahogany harvests.
This just shifted US imports of mahogany from Peru, which is boosting its mahogany production by selling logging concessions to foreign timber companies. From 1995, to 1998, US imports from Bolivia decreased by 200 percent while imports into the United States from Peru surged by nearly the same percentage, according to the report.
Robbins recommends that consumers in the United States support conservation efforts by purchasing products that carry the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) trademark. The FSC certifies that the wood comes from forests that are managed according to principles and criteria endorsed by conservationists worldwide.
Currently, only two US companies (both based in California) are known to import big-leafed mahogany derived from forests certified by companies accredited by Mexico-based FSC.
But as concerns about conserving the rainforest increase, the number of wholesalers, manufacturers, retailers and municipalities purchasing, using or pledging to buy FSC-certified wood is increasing in this country.
Echoing previous demands by environmental organisations, the report also calls for governments worldwide to place mahogany on the list of endangered species, under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).
So far, Bolivia, Brazil, Costa Rica, and Mexico have listed their natural populations of big-leafed mahogany in a category of the convention known as Appendix III, which has improved the regulation and record keeping on trade in these nations, according to the report.
The report calls on governments, especially those supplying the mahogany, to move mahogany to the next level of CITES protection under Appendix II. Under this listing, trade in mahogany would not be banned, but it would provide a legal basis for exporting countries to regulate exports in the interest of survival of the species.
If mahogany was listed on Appendix II it would also provide a mechanism for importing countries to monitor imports, therefore stemming illegal harvesting and trafficking.
''An Appendix II listing for mahogany would reassure overseas consumers that the mahogany used in their furniture was exported in a sustainable and legal manner,'' says the report.
Repeated attempts, however, to get the highly profitable wood listed on Appendix II have failed.
TRAFFIC also urges the United States to impose or increase duties for imports of mahogany. ''The US government could levy a nominal duty on imports of mahogany from Latin American (nations that export mahogany) and redirect funds derived from duties back to exporting countries for mahogany conservation and management,'' it says.