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WORLDWIDE
BIODIVERSITY/FOREST CAMPAIGN NEWS
Greenpeace
U.S. Launches Mahogany Boycott
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Forest
Networking a Project of Ecological Enterprises
March
9, 1995
OVERVIEW
& SOURCE
Greenpeace
reports here, and this list has followed for some time,
the
role of Mahogany extraction on rainforest decline,
particularly
in the Amazon. Following is
Greenpeace's announcment
of a boycott
campaign against Mahogany called "DYING FOR
MAHOGANY". This was posted in econet's
rainfor.general
conference.
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TEXT STARTS HERE:
/*
Written 1:10 PM Mar
9, 1995 by gptfc in igc:rainfor.genera
*/
/*
---------- "GP US Mahogany Launch" ---------- */
FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MARCH 8, 1995
Contact: Cynthia Rust, Greenpeace Newsdesk,
206/632-4326
"DYING FOR MAHOGANY"
-----------------------------
GREENPEACE
TARGETS TIMBER IMPORTERS TO LAUNCH MAHOGANY BOYCOTT
Newport Beach, California (GP) -- The market for mahogany in
the
United States is contributing to the death of Brazilian
Indians
and tropical forests, says Greenpeace. Beginning this
week,
the environment group is calling for a boycott of mahogany
wood
products as part of their international effort to protect
tropical
forests.
The "Dying for Mahogany"
campaign will be launched at a press
conference
and "funeral procession" on Thursday, March 9, 1995 at
9:30
a.m. in the Garden Room I, Hyatt Newporter Resort, 1107
Jamboree
Road, Newport Beach, California.
The dramatic funeral procession and press
conference will
coincide
with the International Wood Products Association's (IHPA)
Annual
Convention, also at the Hyatt Newporter.
The IHPA is a
consortium
of U.S. wood importers, including the largest mahogany
importers. Some of these mahogany importers include
Robinson
Lumber,
Thompson Mahogany, Dan K. Moore, EAC Timbers Americas, Pat
Brown
Lumber and Interforest Corp. Robinson
Lumber also has a
Brazilian
subsidiary called Robco that exports mahogany
worldwide.
The funeral procession is a memorial to
the Brazilian
Indians,
including the Tikuna, who have either been murdered by
the
mahogany loggers or who have died from introduced diseases
from
the loggers. At least nine Indian
groups have been
jeopardized,
even murdered, in mahogany related incidents.
It is a tragic irony that one of the uses
of mahogany in the
U.S. is
for making coffins. The coffins used by the Greenpeace
funeral
procession have been made with 100 percent post consumer
and
post agricultural waste material.
Loggers who cut mahogany on Indian land
and other protected
areas
do so illegally, according to the Brazilian Constitution.
The
American public and wood users who buy mahogany are
unknowingly
party to these illegal activities. Some
of the U.S.
importers
get mahogany from Brazilian companies that have been
charged
by Brazilian courts with illegally logging in indigenous
reserves.
Greenpeace's
campaign aims to alert the U.S. public to these
criminal
activities and forest destruction. The environmental
group,
with nearly five million supporters globally, will press
toward
a U.S. ban on mahogany imports until the trade is brought
under
control.
"The American public can help
protect tropical forests and
indigenous
people by refusing to buy mahogany furniture, paneling
and
even coffins," said Pamela Wellner, Greenpeace forest
campaigner. "Until effective regulations are put
into place and
there
is an assessment of the forest damage in the mahogany
exporting
countries there is simply no other choice but to boycott
mahogany."
The U.S. is the largest importer of
mahogany from Latin
America,
the bulk of which comes from Brazil and Bolivia. From
1990-1992
the annual average of mahogany imports was 108,000 cubic
meters,
equivalent to 28 football field stacked one yard high.
Mahogany logging causes extreme degradation
to the tropical
forests
of Latin America, including the Amazon rainforest. For
every
one mahogany tree cut at least 25 other trees are destroyed.
Mahogany
is sporadically dispersed throughout the forest, causing
a vast
network of logging roads.
A coalition of over 80 Brazilian
environmental, indigenous
peoples
and human rights groups has stated: "Timber exploitation
in
general, and particularly the selective logging of mahogany,
represents
today the first step in the disorderly and destructive
occupation
of the Amazon forest."
Mahogany is considered to be an
endangered species by the
national
Brazilian environmental agency, IBAMA.
Of the three
different
species of mahogany, two are already listed on the
Convention
on the International Trade in Endangered Species
(CITES). The U.S. supported the listing of the third
species,
Swietenia
macrophylla, at the 1994 CITES meeting last November.
The
proposal was six votes shy of the two thirds majority needed
to list
the species to Appendix II. Appendix II
is not a ban on
trade
but would have helped regulate it.
Brazil and Bolivia,
joined
by the International Wood Products Association, were the
main
opponents to the listing.
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