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https://www.fauna-flora.org/news/rosewood-burning-a-symbolic-sacrifice-to-stop-the-destruction
https://www.fauna-flora.org/news/rosewood-burning-a-symbolic-sacrifice-to-stop-the-destruction
Belize rosewood
- Thread starter woodman6415
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I'm sick! What a waste! More than one way to make a point, and this is a horrible way. Chuck
This happened in 2013 before all the rosewoods were listed in CITES Cat 2. Hopefully, that has slowed the illegal harvesting that was going on. The article said that local communities and artisans were given all the rosewood burls (70) and smaller beams. The larger logs that were going to be exported illegally were burned.
Sad but probably necessary. Just like burning drugs, elephant tusks and rhino horns that are confiscated.
Sad but probably necessary. Just like burning drugs, elephant tusks and rhino horns that are confiscated.
I disagree- selling the already dead trees or tusks would do more to fund education or re train people that are losing jobs. And not that The
is sarcastic or anything like that -nosireebob- but how is the drug war going- we have more heroin then we have ever have. The definition of insanity is continuing to do something that does not and has not worked but decide the best thing to do is do the same thing but expect different results..............Not much different with the wood. I read somewhere that 90% of Mozambique's logging is illegal and exported. So the solution to this would be burn the wood........ :headbut:
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Mike, I think you and I agree that no one should profit from illegal activities. That's all I'm saying.
It is not even us woodworkers they are worried about. It is rich Chinese that just have to have exotic furniture until the last tree is cut down. I guess they want to brag they have the last one.
Nah I have read both our statements over and over- and not to be a pain in the butt- he says just before he IS going to be a pain. ( and you think -Yikes I thought he already was
) Burning this wood and tusks is nothing but political grandstanding. It solves nothing. Does burning the wood scare the wood poachers - I doubt it. By the time wood gets here all it takes is a bureaucrat's stamp at any step and yahoo we have legal wood. It sorta gets down to how much does said bureaucrat's stamp cost. also it does nothing to where the wood really is going. Most to one spot in the world. and it is not the rich chinese it is the growing middle class. rosewood is a status symbol and for the first time available to more and more. and there is some poor native that needs to feed his family, his dad packed trees out of jungle on his back to feed him. and no stinking rule that some far off bureaucrat has written means one damn thing to him. to him- it is food.. This is the reality of the problem all over the world. In Guatemala they cut the trees down in at least 2 ways. 1. they go into jungle target dead or dying tree and pack it out. certified. I have some coco from there- very nice with a huge price tag. 2. in the name of agriculture we strip forest to make field. This is how containers get filled. this is happening all over the world. Don't worry we are not doing it this way here anymore- hell we prefer burning it and letting it rot.
JMO but burning a puny stack of wood is political ploy to get on front page- serves no real purpose- well it does add sequestered co2 to the air.....
but that is a whole new argument.... 
The problem to me is not that the poor villagers or farmers should be allowed to cut rosewoods to make money to support their families. I feel for them as much as anyone and I'm financially supporting three different organizations that work to help these poor folks so they don't have to flee their poverty to come north and enter the USA illegally. I'm sure you and many others on this site do as much or more than me to help.
My daughter is leaving Monday to make her fourth trip down to Guatemala to assist a well driller in the middle of nowhere. She is taking with her the CEO of a full services oil company based in Texas who feels a conviction to help drill water wells and set up schools to teach money-making skills to villagers. He and my daughter know that Guatemala is one of the larges sources of illegal immigrants fleeing to the USA and they want to help create conditions to keep them from wanting to leave. Many hundreds of others are down there helping but they get no news coverage nor do they seek it.
The problem is that these folks doing the work to make a little money just start the cycle. By the time the logs change hands two or more times within Belize or Guatemala, they will leave on a ship and then change hands three or more times before lumber gets to a furniture maker. There are probably 10 different levels of profit in these rare wood transactions before the final customer pays 10,000 times what the poor guy earned who did the initial backbreaking harvesting of the wood to feed his family. Same thing happens with elephant ivory and rhino horns. The logs you see being burned are owned by the guys who paid the poor people to cut and haul them out. Those poor people were paid and they did their job. In other words, it's not the poor people being ripped off by burning their logs. The people who lost money were all the collectors, distributors, haulers, shippers, sawyers, woodworkers, wholesalers, retailers and consumers. Since they were taking a chance by illegally dealing with contraband, so be it.
As you pointed out, the logs shown in the article were already cut. Nothing anyone can do is going to bring them back to life. But by cutting off the funds that were used to pay the poor villagers for finding and cutting those trees, other living ones might survive until they die naturally. Rosewoods take forever to grow. Hopefully, we will continue to get rosewoods that have died naturally and were legally harvested. People are planting rosewoods in plantations for the future but it will require several generations of people before they are large enough for good lumber. At least, there is hope for saving these great trees.
We woodworkers have many thousands of other great species to use in our work. Rosewoods are special, but so are the many woods that show up on this site daily and are not threatened with their survival.
My daughter is leaving Monday to make her fourth trip down to Guatemala to assist a well driller in the middle of nowhere. She is taking with her the CEO of a full services oil company based in Texas who feels a conviction to help drill water wells and set up schools to teach money-making skills to villagers. He and my daughter know that Guatemala is one of the larges sources of illegal immigrants fleeing to the USA and they want to help create conditions to keep them from wanting to leave. Many hundreds of others are down there helping but they get no news coverage nor do they seek it.
The problem is that these folks doing the work to make a little money just start the cycle. By the time the logs change hands two or more times within Belize or Guatemala, they will leave on a ship and then change hands three or more times before lumber gets to a furniture maker. There are probably 10 different levels of profit in these rare wood transactions before the final customer pays 10,000 times what the poor guy earned who did the initial backbreaking harvesting of the wood to feed his family. Same thing happens with elephant ivory and rhino horns. The logs you see being burned are owned by the guys who paid the poor people to cut and haul them out. Those poor people were paid and they did their job. In other words, it's not the poor people being ripped off by burning their logs. The people who lost money were all the collectors, distributors, haulers, shippers, sawyers, woodworkers, wholesalers, retailers and consumers. Since they were taking a chance by illegally dealing with contraband, so be it.
As you pointed out, the logs shown in the article were already cut. Nothing anyone can do is going to bring them back to life. But by cutting off the funds that were used to pay the poor villagers for finding and cutting those trees, other living ones might survive until they die naturally. Rosewoods take forever to grow. Hopefully, we will continue to get rosewoods that have died naturally and were legally harvested. People are planting rosewoods in plantations for the future but it will require several generations of people before they are large enough for good lumber. At least, there is hope for saving these great trees.
We woodworkers have many thousands of other great species to use in our work. Rosewoods are special, but so are the many woods that show up on this site daily and are not threatened with their survival.
Actually you both leave out one tiny bit of reality common to all cultures globally, and most certainly in third world cultures. That is corruption in government and greed playing a hand here. Very likely someone in government tied in with the black market, or at minimum getting kick backs, wherein issuing orders to, and burning these rare woods, elephant tusks, whatever, that probably belonged to the competition... Helps drive the prices of such higher on the black market, helps drive the competition out of business.
I'm with Mike there. Burning the stuff is counterproductive to the specific cause, it's going to happen regardless; destroying it does nothing but drive the market ever higher, making it more profitable for those willing to take the risks.
I'm with Mike there. Burning the stuff is counterproductive to the specific cause, it's going to happen regardless; destroying it does nothing but drive the market ever higher, making it more profitable for those willing to take the risks.
Unfortunately, we have corrupt government officials all over the world. Just look at the Washington DC swamp as an example. But all towns, cities, counties have at least some politicians that are only looking out for themselves. How do you think so many retire with fortunes?
It's a complicated problem and I think the only solution is draconian penalties for the purchasers and purveyors of illegally harvested wood. I fail to see the value in burning the wood unless you first tie the people purchasing, milling and transporting the wood to it.
It is a cascading effect and woodworkers, construction industries and instrument builders are not just the main culprit as more trades are involved in all of this- the perfume industry plays a big role (oils) and don’t forget the fabric industry as they use certain woods to dye raw garments.
This actually happens in our neck of the woods and we are “not immune” to this- there are articles written that this happens here in the US in which redwood and quilted maple get illegally harvested and stolen.
Drama news as far as big leaf (quilted) goes. Most is legaly harvest, very little illeagal. But the honest hard working logger never gets on the news. Big leaf is a weed. They used to log the doug fir, cedar and spruce and bulldoze maple and alder into pile and burn it..
This one was pretty big news as it happened to one of the most well known guitar companies:
https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdwa/p...ct-purchases-and-sales-figured-maple-national
An Oregon logger expressed to me at one point in regards about what was happening in his “neck of the woods”, that thieves would come in the middle of the night and cut heaps of maple. They would only take the figured areas and leave the rest of the plain maple sit on the forest floor to rot.
A good share of maple does rot. Not saying it did not happen but most maple is not gotten illeagally.
And to my point above below are all the news stories about the hard working men and women that suppy all the legal maple............................................................................................ 
Not being pesky about it, but point is that regardless “it happens” here domestically. I know of a logger in HI, too who has told me several scenarios that logging happens with “watchful eye” when it comes to harvesting koa. There are loggers who likes to “look the other way”. Koa as you know can now only be harvested if the tree died of natural age, down by a storm or if it is in a private property of the land owner. This is why the cost of figured koa has crept up dramatically. Figured koa that was graded 5A back in the 1980’s is not the same grade quality now- 4A is now the new 5A. The very best figured koa actually leaves our country and it goes to Japan.
We are talking in circles. There will always be scumbags. Hell look at the congress. Ya got folks there thinkin islands will sink. Most people in biz are honest. Just my observation.