From grbarry@students.wisc.edu Tue Aug  1 09:57:07 2000
Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2000 12:43:21 -0500
From: Glen R. Barry 
Subject: BIOD: Following the Trail of Illegal Rainforest Wood

***********************************************
WORLDWIDE FOREST/BIODIVERSITY CAMPAIGN NEWS
Following the Trail of Illegal Rainforest Wood
***********************************************
Forest Networking a Project of Forests.org, Inc.
     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.

*******************************
RELAYED TEXT STARTS HERE:

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. 

###RELAYED TEXT ENDS###  
This document is a PHOTOCOPY for educational, personal and non- 
commercial use only.  Recipients should seek permission from the 
source for reprinting.  All efforts are made to provide accurate, 
timely pieces; though ultimate responsibility for verifying all 
information rests with the reader.  Check out our Gaia's Forest 
Conservation Archives & Portal at URL= http://forests.org/  
Networked by Forests.org, Inc., grbarry@students.wisc.edu