Ray wrote:
X-rated Bob wrote:
And rosewood is not the only wood that's being illegally harvested. There are mahoganies that are out of bounds too.
Most manufacturers (big and small) will take reasonable care to not use illegally sourced woods, though this means they have to trust their suppliers too.
Rosewood is not automatically illegal, and most of it isn't.
Well, that's just too sweet for words. A small contribution to the problem is a contribution. And somebody has told you all of these things and you believed them? As for the last statement, well, I dont know. There sure is a hell of a lot of stuff being made from materiial on the endangered or protected lists.
I think you touch on some interesting points, Ray.
Now it's clear that there IS a problem with illegal logging. On a large scale it's hard to hide because we have satellites all over the place that will pick up that where there used to be a forest there is now something else. But still we hear about centers of illegal logging - but how many? More or less than the properly run, renewable, "legal" operations? I don't think so, though if there's some good data to the contrary I'd have to rethink my position.
Also human nature comes into play. Our senses and our sense of outrage prick up a bit more when we hear of one illegal operation than we would if we heard about ten legal operations. Maybe that's right. Maybe we should devote more energy to being angry about the one illegal than we do to celebrating the ten legal. Maybe that's how problems get addressed. But it does make for skewed news coverage and, sometimes, skewed perceptions.
There's lots of legal rosewood logging going on (mostly round India and East Asia). It seems to me that there's more of that than there is illegal logging, so from that I extrapolate that there is more legal rosewood finding it's way into the various markets than illegal.
Not that that makes any illegal operation OK. However there seems to be some concern here about ALL rosewood, but I think people with rosewood on their guitars (like me, for example) should relax a little about this because most likely what they have is OK, and if it isn't they are not the guilty party. So IMO we can remain angry about what is happening in Madagascar but relax about guitars with rosewood on them.
BTW, when we consider woods we need to consider not just the wood but where it came from.
EG there are only two TRUE mahoganies
Swietenia mahagoni, commonly known as Cuban mahogany, and
Swietenia macrophylla which is Honduras mahogany. Both of these are indigenous to the Americas, and the wood is currently illegal IF IT IS FELLED IN THE AMERICAS.
Swietenia macrophylla has been cultivated in other countries, mostly in plantations across Asia. It does well there. The plantations are properly managed. It's the same wood, but it is legal or illegal depending on it's origin.
In fact in some countries where it is not indigenous
Swietenia macrophylla is now considered a pest. In the Philippines it is an invasive species and a big nuisance - crowding out species indigenous to those islands. So from an ecological POV you might be contributing postively if you were felling
Swietenia macrophylla trees in the Philippines (although you'd be breaking international law if you felled the same tree in Honduras).
This principle can apply in the animal kingdom as well. The Possum is endangered in Australia. In New Zealand however it has very few natural enemies, has adapted well and bred fast and is now regarded as a pest. In Australia they protect Possums. In New Zealand they kill them and make wool from their fur. I was given a pair of Possum wool socks as a present by friends who'd been to New Zealand.
