In this Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2012 photo, a woman stands near
a table made from Vietnamese rosewood at a furniture shop in Beijing.
Much of the richly hued, brownish hardwood is being illegally ripped
from Southeast Asian forests, then smuggled and turned into Chinese
furniture that can sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Some of it
also ends up in the finest American guitars, or as billiard cues.
Ng Han Guan — AP Photo
Published: November 24, 2012 By DENIS D. GRAY — Associated Press
KOH KONG, Cambodia — A Thai
force dubbed the "Rambo Army" couldn't stop the gangs, armed with
battlefield weaponry, as they scoured the forests. Neither could a brave
activist, gunned down when he came to investigate. Nor, apparently, can
governments across Southeast Asia.
The root of the conflicts and bloodshed? Rosewood.
The
richly hued, brownish hardwood is being illegally ripped from Southeast
Asian forests, then smuggled by sea and air to be turned into Chinese
furniture that can sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Some of it
also ends up in the finest American guitars, or as billiard cues.
The
felling, almost all of it illegal, has increased dramatically in recent
years and driven the region's rosewood to the brink of extinction.
"This
is not just an environmental issue. It drives corruption and criminal
networks. There is a lot of violence and blood spilled before the
rosewood ends up in someone's living room," says Faith Doherty of the
Environmental Investigation Agency, a nongovernmental group based in
London. "It's one of the most expensive woods in the world. That's why
there is a war for it."
In Koh Kong, a jungle region of southwest
Cambodia where most villagers earn less than $2 a day, finding a
rosewood tree is better than winning the lottery. A cubic meter (1.3
cubic yards) of top-grade rosewood last year could be sold for up to
$2,700 to middlemen who hover around forests and construction sites of
dams and roads in Thailand, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam.
Various
species grow in Southeast Asia and countries including India, Brazil and
Madagascar. Nearly all source nations have banned felling and export of
unprocessed rosewood, allowing harvesting only in special cases such as
clearing forests for dam construction.
The volume of rosewood
consumed by China alone suggests that most was obtained illegally. China
imported $600 million worth in 2011, according to official Chinese
documents made available by James Hewitt, an expert on the illegal
timber trade at the London think tank Chatham House. About half came
from Southeast Asian countries.
The documents also show that
China's appetite is soaring - from just 66,000 cubic meters in 2005 to
500,000 cubic meters last year. Rosewood has long been prized in China,
and the dramatic growth of its wealthy class is cited as the main reason
for the surge in exploitation.
The hunt for rosewood ignites violence between officials and smugglers, and sometimes among rival gangs.
The
EIA estimates that nearly 50 Cambodian loggers and smugglers have been
killed in Thailand and others arrested over the past two years in
clashes, with Thais also suffering casualties.
In Koh Kong, one of
the country's leading environmental activists, Chut Wutty, was shot
dead in April while investigating illegal rosewood logging by
Timbergreen, a company with no known address that is believed to be a
hook-up of gangs and officials.
In Thailand 's northeast,
authorities last year formed what they called a "Rambo Army" of 11-man
units of armed forestry rangers to target the traffickers who cross the
porous frontier from Cambodia, often in well-armed bands. The Rambo Army
was disbanded after a three-month operation due to lack of funds.
Despite
the loss of law-enforcement muscle and widespread corruption, thousands
of illegally felled trees have been seized in recent years and many of
those accused of involvement in the trade have been arrested, including
the son of a Cambodian general and 12 Thai police officers. Last month,
Thai authorities nabbed eight Cambodian rosewood hunters in the Thai
border province of Sisaket.
It hasn't been enough to protect
rosewood in Thailand. By some official estimates, the number of rosewood
trees there dropped from 300,000 in 2005 to as low as 80,000 last year.
"The
spectrum of illegal rosewood logging ranges from loggers, military and
police officers to Thai forestry officials. This network runs the
industry," says Chavalit Lohkunsombat, who commanded the Rambo Army and
remains head of the forest protection unit of Nakhon Sawan province.
Once
the smuggled rosewood snakes its way to furniture makers in China,
often via Vietnam, the price escalates. A sofa and chair set of high
quality "hongmu" or rosewood can sell for $320,000, according to the
China Daily. A four-poster bed was seen by the EIA with a $1 million
price tag.
Some rosewood makes its way to the U.S. and Europe. A number of Chinese websites offer rosewood products to Western customers.
U.S.
authorities in 2009 and 2011 raided the Tennessee plants of the Gibson
Guitar Corporation, seizing $500,000 worth of imported ebony and
rosewood that was to be used in fingerboards. Gibson paid $350,000 in
penalties in August to settle federal charges of illegally importing
ebony, but rosewood was not part of the charges.
Environmental groups suspect many such rosewood sales violate U.S. and European Union laws.
"I
would be very interested to see how American and European outlets prove
that the products they are selling come from legally felled wood," says
Doherty of EIA, which has been investigating the rosewood trade for
several years. "In countries with widespread corruption and fraud, you
need an independent monitor on the ground and that is not happening.
When I look at products in American stores, I have my doubts."
China
is making tentative efforts to import rosewood and other species from
legal sources, having established several bodies to regulate the trade.
But one Chinese official familiar with the timber trade acknowledged
that while the Beijing government was in principle against illegally
imported wood, "this has yet to be reinforced by laws." The official
spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
Chinese
customs documents show Cambodia exported 36,000 cubic meters of logs to
China from January 2007 to August 2012. The Cambodian government
recently issued a blanket denial, but there's a different story on the
ground.
In recent years, Chinese companies have begun building
dams in Koh Kong, making inroads into one of the region's largest tracts
of wilderness, and Cambodian logging groups were awarded licenses to
log out areas the dams will flood.
According to foreign
conservationists and the Cambodian human rights group LICADHO, which has
investigators in Koh Kong, the work created an opportunity for "tree
laundering." They say logging companies falsified documents to make it
appear their wood came from permitted areas when it was actually
harvested up to 50 kilometers (30 miles) away.
"There's not a lot
of valuable timber in dam reservoir areas because of where they are
located and these are not huge areas. So they roam all over the
mountains cutting luxury timber first," says Marcus Hardtke, a German
forestry expert who has worked extensively in Cambodia, including Koh
Kong. "You can drive many trucks through that loophole."
LICADHO
and foreign conservationists say trees are felled by the company itself
or villagers, who in some cases pull a single rosewood tree by ox cart
for three or four weeks so they can sell it to middlemen. Military
police trucks ferry the timber to warehouses in remote areas of Koh
Kong. Then it's shipped down the Tatay River by barges to seagoing
vessels headed for Vietnam, or by road to the capital, Phnom Penh, and
on to the Vietnamese border.
When the rosewood trade surged in
late 2009, trucks were running night and day piled with logs in Koh
Kong. Now, with the rapid depletion, villagers are going for roots,
branches and old cuttings, selling rosewood by the kilogram rather than
cubic meter, conservationists say.
EIA says that to curb the
trade, Southeast Asian nations must push for rosewood to be included in
CITES, the international treaty protecting trade in endangered flora and
fauna. Rosewood species from Madagascar and Brazil are already listed.
Listing
rosewood would force China to seize imports not accompanied by official
CITES documents from country of origin. But given corrupt, vested
interests, this is not easy. Regional cooperation is also essential.
"Punishment
in Thailand is very light," says Chavalit, the Thai forestry official.
"Most loggers get suspended sentences if they confess. What we need is
harsher punishment and serious law enforcement. Thai authorities need to
be serious about illegal logging suppression."
Tougher
regulations on timber exports to the European Union will take effect in
March. In the U.S., the Lacey Act of 2008 makes it illegal to import
wood harvested and exported illegally under another country's laws.
But all this may prove too late for forests.
"The
rosewood is almost all gone from Koh Kong after just a few years," says
LICADHO's In Kongchit. "It has been a total rape."
Associated Press writers Sopheng Cheang
in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and Thanyarat Doksone in Bangkok and AP
researcher Flora Ji in Beijing contributed to this report.
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