Brazil tightens rules on mahogany logging
Date: 09-Jun-03
Country: BRAZIL
The decision by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva obliges any logger to present a plan before being able to cut down mahogany and comes after international trade of the wood was curbed under the U.N.'s Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).
Brazil had already banned logging of mahogany in October 2001 on fears that at current rates of deforestation its Amazon reserves of mahogany would disappear in a few years. Brazil accounts for about half of the world's mahogany, which is used to make musical instruments and furniture.
Since then a series of shipments of Brazilian mahogany have been refused entry into countries like Britain and the United States on suspicions the wood was illegally cut.
Under the CITES curb on mahogany, which can fetch up to $1,500 per 10.76 square feet in markets like Japan and Britain, any logging plans must include special plans whereby only older trees are cut down and they are felled to avoid pulling down others.
Such logging plans, which environmentalists hope one day will become widespread in the Amazon, are expensive and require special equipment which the poor loggers and farmers blamed for most of the Amazon's destruction cannot afford.