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WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS

Following the Trail of Illegal Rainforest Wood

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Forest Networking a Project of Forests.org

http://forests.org/ -- Forest Conservation Archives

http://forests.org/web/ -- Discuss Forest Conservation

07/24/00

OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY

Greenpeace has completed a two-year investigation, tracking timbers

that were illegally exported by transnational loggers from the Amazon

to prestigious institutions such as the British Museum and Heals

Furniture in Great Britain. The fact that legitimate users of wood

were shown to be complicit in the massive scourge of illegal timber

harvest blanketing the globe illustrates the developed World's

complicity in ancient forest loss. Until all wood and wood products

have independent certification of their entire chain of origin and

sustainability of management practices, any one of us could be

contributing to the total demise of the Planet's ancient forests by

buying virtually any wood product.

A Greenpeace activist sums it up nicely, quoted below as saying "What

we want is certified, sustainable logging. We are not against logging

jobs, but we want jobs for ever, rather than the short term."

Practices such as death threats and bribery are being practiced by a

handful of predatory companies to access and liquidate the World's

remaining large, wild forests. But increasingly through the good

works of many, their veil of anonymity and impunity is being removed,

and governments are being forced to address the matter. Keep up the

great work Greenpeace! We are with you and we know we will win.

g.b.

P.S. I am sending this to the Papua New Guinea list also because one

of the companies named in supplying the illegal logs is WTK, active

in the Vanimo and Madang area.

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Title: Trail of rainforest wood from the Amazon to the high street

Activists track illegal exports to shops and builders

Source: Guardian Newspapers Limited, Copyright 2000

Date: July 23, 2000

Byline: Anthony Browne, environment correspondent

anthony.browne@observer.co.uk

The British Museum and world-famous furniture store Heals are in

disarray this weekend over allegations that they are supporting the

illegal destruction of the Amazon rainforest.

Shockwaves have been sent through the British furniture and building

industry as a result of a two-year investigation by Greenpeace which

has revealed for the first time the extent to which illegally logged

wood from Brazil is surreptitiously exported to the UK.

The campaigners, working with Brazilian environmental officials,

tracked trees from the depths of the Amazon forest to timber merchants

in Britain. They showed how the increasingly rare samoama tree -

dubbed 'Queen of the Forest' - which soars above protected areas of

the jungle is turned into cheap plywood trampled on in the building

sites of high-profile British government projects, and used in

furniture in Britain's most prestigious stores.

To uncover the evidence Greenpeace took a North Sea repair ship,

complete with aircraft and launches, down tributaries of the Amazon.

They also used electronic tracking devices, fluorescent marker paints

and old-fashioned impersonation, pretending to be students, customers

and budding entrepreneurs.

Until now there has been little evidence about how the wood enters

Britain. The Brazilian government reckons 80 per cent of logging in

the Amazon is illegal, but is unable to control the trade because of

the huge profits involved. The official environmental inspectors,

IBAMA, have just one inspector for each area of jungle the size of

Switzerland.

The surreptitious trade in illegal wood is masterminded by Asian

companies which have been repeatedly fined by the Brazilian government

for illegal logging, but it continues with the aid of death threats,

bribery of officials, links to the drugs trade - and the unwitting

support of British companies who are told the wood comes from legal

sources. More than 1,400 tonnes of plywood from the Amazon is exported

to Britain each month.

The investigation has led to multi-million dollar fines in Brazil,

protests by loggers, police raids of warehouses, and the government

revoking dozens of logging licences as a result of what they called

the 'Greenpeace effect'.

The investigation showed that the logging company Amaplac, which has

been fined three times by the Brazilian government for possessing

illegal logs, has supplied more than 300 sheets of plywood made from

Amazonian trees for the construction of the British Museum's

forecourt. The samoama trees, noted for their fine buttress roots,

have been turned into hoardings.

The British Museum - which has a firm policy against using illegally

logged wood - issued a statement insisting that it had been 'reassured

by our suppliers that the plywood being used in our current

construction programme has been manufactured from sustainable

sources'. However, immediately afterwards its timber supplier,

Lawsons, said it would stop buying from Amaplac until it could be sure

the wood was legal.

Amaplac is facing a mass boycott by British firms, with several others

- including Lathams and Jewsons - suspending contracts last week. John

Sauven, director of forestry at Greenpeace, said: 'All the companies

have glowing policies on this, but when it comes to reality they don't

know what they are doing. It's their responsibility to check on their

suppliers - who have a criminal record, their third party suppliers

have a criminal record, and 80 per cent of Amazon logging is

criminal.'

The investigation also revealed that the Amazonian wood is being used

in a 15-drawer cabinet sold at Heals for more than o1,000. The wood

was ultimately supplied by the Japanese company Eidai, which has

amassed dozens of prosecutions for illegal logging in the Amazon and

was recently fined $1.8 million (o1.2m) as a result of the Greenpeace

investigation. An employee of Eidai was caught trying to bribe an

IBAMA official at Brasilia airport, after handing over a suitcase with

almost $300,000 in cash.

Heals had been reassured by its furniture makers that the Eidai wood

was from sustainable sources - based simply on reassurances from Eidai

itself. Sally Bendelow, purchasing director at Heals, told The

Observer: 'I'm shocked. We don't want to be involved in anything

like this. Perhaps our due diligence is rubbish.'

The directors of Heals, a favourite of the Bloomsbury set, will next

week discuss how to maintain its 180-year reputation.

The Greenpeace investigation showed that one trail of illegal timber

starts high up the Jurua tributary in the heart of the vast Amazonas

state. On separate sorties, Greenpeace's Cessna aeroplane spotted 50

log rafts floating down rivers, which the campaigners then followed on

launches.

The log rafts had floated downstream from land protected by law. But

far from the eyes of government officials, the law is largely ignored.

Local patrones - landlords - make their money illegally chopping down

the trees.

As they float downstream, nudged by barges, the log rafts are sold on

and joined together. By the time they reached the Amazonas capital of

Manaus the rafts have thousands of logs each.

At Manaus the logs were bought by Amaplac, a subsidiary of the

Malaysian company WTK. In a big sawmill in Manaus the Queen of the

Forest is pulped into plywood, packed into containers, and loaded on

to ships owned by the German shipping company B&F. Almost three-

quarters of Amaplac's exports of plywood go to the UK, and once a

month the boat takes the cargo across the Atlantic to Tilbury docks.

At Tilbury the containers are unloaded into a large warehouse.

Greenpeace activists painted slogans on the crates, and planted

tracking devices inside. They slept outside the docks, then followed

the vans and lorries as they distributed the wood around the country.

'The workers at the docks were very supportive of us when they

realised why we were doing it,' said Sauven.

The Amaplac wood is collected by a large timber merchant, then

distributed to smaller timber yards and so to builders. One timber

merchant, Lawsons, takes the wood to north London builders through its

Drayton Park timber yard. Lawsons' delivery details show that, over

the last three months, 300 sheets of Amaplac plywood have been

delivered to Alandale Construction for use at the British Museum. The

dozens of other sites using the wood include the Olympia and Earl's

Court Exhibition Centres. Earl's Court said it had no policy on the

issue.

Greenpeace followed another illegal timber trail from the already

largely devastated region of Para in eastern Brazil. They encountered

a lorry carrying seven logs, which an IBAMA official identified as

being illegally cut down. The activists followed it to a warehouse

outside the Amazon port of Belem, owned by Eidai.

Armed Eidai guards would not let the IBAMA officials in to inspect the

warehouse, and only backed down when police support arrived. Based on

what they found inside the warehouse IBAMA imposed a $1.8m fine on

Eidai.

IBAMA was so concerned about the extent of illegal logging by

companies it had granted licences to that it immediately revoked most

of the licences in the region, telling local journalists it was

because of the 'Greenpeace effect'.

The activists then followed an Eidai shipment from Brazil to

Felixstowe, on board the P&O Nedlloyd Kingston. A Greenpeace activist

found the Amazonian wood being used by Kala Designs in Suffolk. Kala

reassured Heals the wood was not illegally logged. Sauven of

Greenpeace said: 'What we want is certified, sustainable logging.

We are not against logging jobs, but we want jobs for ever, rather

than the short term.' Greenpeace will this week present its evidence

to the Department of Environment Transport and the Regions, which is

planning to announce that all wood used in government projects must

come from legal sources.

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