Madagascar rosewood

[Paul Hostetter]

I've been to Madagascar and I've seen first-hand what resource exploitation has done to the place (not to mention poverty and horrendous politics). I've long maintained that Madagascar rosewood, so fashionable in the lutherie world, is being extracted illegally, but my lone voice hasn't been able to do much.

National Geographic's current (September 2010) issue has an article on this issue. I urge folks who think all's fair in the marketplace have a good look at that article. Many of the damning images and brief captions can be viewed here: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2010/09/madagascar/maitre-photogr...

This map of the current state of things isn't in the slideshow at the Geo site:

It was all forest once. It's mostly burned out bare dirt eroding into the Indian Ocean now. Commercial trade in Madagascar rosewood has been built entirely on lies. There's almost none left. Please think about it.

[Russell Vance]

Hi Tim,
Things are not as dire as they seem for sustainables - Fijian Mahogany (Swietenia Macrophlla) plantations were started from scratch in the late 40's and are now providing large sustainable logs for all manner of products (including top end guitars). Maccassar ebony plantations and east indian rosewood is also seen as a sustainable,renewable resource and in the U.S. Maple and Alder and others are in abundance.

Plantations will continue to come on line due to commercial interests - it is the continued destruction of other countries ecosystems and economies that I have a aversion to. Mentioned elsewhere in this thread is the notion that luthiers don't use much endangered timber - this is like saying that you only have one elephant tusk, or a small buffalo pelt or a Dodo claw - it's what we individually take not how much (given todays market sizes) that causes the problems.

It's the hard to get "name" exotics that fuel the supply and demand economics that destroy forests/countries and drive species to commercial extinction. The hardest thing to do is to not use these species when other are and are gaining a commercial edge in doing so. Nuff said. Rusty.

[Mark Pollock]

Not recommending this, just offering it as food for thought.

http://www.tropicalhardwoods.com/index.html

Basically, these folks offer a chance to invest in exotic hardwoods for profit, while semi-restoring these forests for the future. Pretty neat.

[Rory]

Its not just happening in seemingly exotic places like Madagascar and not just exotic woods like rosewood. Here in British Columbia, we are having more & more problems with wood poachers going into forests and illegally cutting down maple trees looking for the nice figured stuff. Several bold occurrences of this happened not too long ago in a large city park between a residential area and a university. In the search for nice figure, they leave numerous other trees damaged or felled. I dont buy wood off strangers on craigslist for one thing, but beyond that, it sure is hard to know who to trust when buying wood. By virtue of where I live, most wood I buy is my mail and I never meet the seller.
Rory

[Charlie Hoffman]

Thanks Paul for raising this issue again. For myself I have stopped using this and am beginning to look closely at the wood I (we) use. I have a few sets of BRW that I got in the 70's but thats it for that wood in my book. In a sense it is too bad and maybe unfair to target the lutherie community as bad actors here. I would rather see that energy put into finding a way to harness the buying power of our community (or, more accurately, our customers) to create sustainable sources of these wonderful woods. On a per board foot basis, I suspect that we can and would pay more for these woods than anyone, if only we could be assured of its appropriateness. And I would love to see us put more effort into convincing our customers that Indian Rosewood is a perfectly fine, even superior, wood.

[Pierre-Antoine Roiron]

Most of the time, considering that it's really hard to be sure of the wood source regarding illegal tree cutting and biodiversity safety, I use European woods, or salvaged wood. But I still can't replace ebony or mahogany for some sounds. Still testing and trying to find something to avoid buying exotic lumbers... until I'm sure of what I'll can buy.

[Russell Vance]

Hi Pierre,
I will keep this tread open as long as I can and I can assure you we all have similar dilemmas - fortunately, plantation/stewarded timber is becoming available and as awareness grows about what is sustainable and what is not, the general luthiers community will no doubt gravitate to the more viable species.

In the mean time it will help if we at least try to establish the provenance and legitimacy of what we are buying - it will also help if the major suppliers (and there are only a few of them) clearly describe and detail how and where their products are harvested and sourced. It goes without saying that to buy a commercial guitar made out of an endangered species is to simply encourage the destruction that is presently underway.

Regards, Russ.

[Donald A. Fortune]

Hey Russell, I need to put this in here because I saw it-- I have a catalog from a supplier, and they have rosewood and ebony both listed in their lineup of woods. Don't know if the material is actually from Madagascar or not but the script says that it is... Peace

[Ned Knepp]

May I ask a question?", he says from the back of the room, waving his hand in the air.

What happens to the people that cut these trees because they have no other source of income?

I agree that the forest should be saved. I agree that some times we need to protected specific trees/animals BUT I can't help but wonder why we think it is always as simple as " Don't buy them".

I really can’t see this as a ecological question. I see it as a social-economic question. The National Geographic material on Paul's link indicates that the men who cut the Rosewood in Madagascar do it because they have no other way to earn even that small pittance of a living. It’s a hard, dangerous job. Fortunes are being made but not by the men doing the damage. If the world suddenly stopped buying their rosewood, a lot of people will get very hungry. Address THIS issue and the other goes away.

I do not agree that existing stocks of this wood should not be used any more than I expect the owners of guitars made of these woods to destroy their instruments. Guitar buyers already have “knowledge” of these woods so avoiding the use of existing stocks isn’t going change the demand. In fact I think that using existing stocks affords an opportunity to bring focus on the issue. Which is actually what I see happening now.

The issue isn't what we already have. Using existing stocks while acknowledging that it is the last of it allows the industry the opportunity to educate the buying public. I agree that we should think carefully about the purchase of some of these woods but I can see no reason for a Luthier to ignore stock he/she may already hold.

Pure prohibition is almost never successful. It usually forces the market under ground and makes it more lucrative for the supplier.

[Russell Vance]

Heard it all before Ned, unfortunately, as the Icelandic cod fishermen who eventually fished out the cod to commercial extinction found - they lost their jobs anyway and the world food chain balance was permanantly damaged, same same the Buffalo hunters in the U.S - killed 30 million Buffalo and left only a couple of hundred thousand - whole races died of starvation and they lost their jobs as well.......The guitar making industry which is run (in the main) by capitalists and corporations will never restrict their profit making in the name of conservation - and the general luthier community doesn't look too flash either - they will continue to strip and hoard until there is nothing left. It's an unpleasant truth and spinning the issue does little other than give other less informed souls an excuse to continue present behavior.

Prohabition doesn't work with alcohol or drugs - but there is an endless and ready supply of these things - once a major tree is down it doesn't come back - not something you can replace.

R.

[Ned Knepp]

I know, Russell, I've heard it too. Sometimes things bear repeating.

Your reference to the Buffalo and Atlantic cod just doesn’t work for me. I do not believe it is the same thing. Buffalo hunters and Cod Fisherman had the support of robust governments and relatively strong economies. The people in Madagascar do not. I'm not saying that it is right to continue to buy M. Rosewood, only that it is not nearly as easy as "just don't buy it". The problem is much greater than the cutting of trees. What I saw in the material Paul posted was the plight of human beings. It seems to me that the ecological issues are a result of that.

The American Bison or Buffalo were doomed to a drastic reduction in numbers from the moment Europeans began to settle this continent. The vast herds required million of acres of open range. This doesn’t justify how they were slaughtered but the reduction in their numbers was going to happen anyway. What happened to the American bison? They survive in preserves and on ranches because people learned that it was desirable to preserve them AND our survival is not dependent upon them. Without the intervention of the government, the indigenous populations of the plains of America would have continued to hunt them until they were gone. Why? Because they would have needed to for survival. This is what I see happening in Madagascar. To me, it is the people that need help, not the trees.

Prohibition never works because it is not really possible to legislate moral values. The best that will happen is that most of the population will conform out of a fear of retribution.

In the end, I do not believe that simply applying the "Do not buy" patch can solve the problem. You are correct, as long as things stay the same in Madagascar, the trees will be cut. When they are gone those desperate people will probably move on to something else just as undesirable IF they do not simply die.

Ned

[Paul Hostetter]

Ned, you make good points, especially about the issue of supporting the people who are cutting the trees, so they'll have an option to do something else. I wish there was something encouraging on the horizon, but things don't look good. Mad is very far away, they don't really invite eco-tourism because it costs a fortune to get there and much of what a visitor is greeted with is so bleak and awful. They don't have a viable government, and as a result have been diplomatically cut off by lots of nations. They don’t have even a history of a viable government: French colonialization pretty much wrecked the place, then a dictator with ties to Beijing and Moscow took over and things went from bad to worse. The couple of governments that have come and gone since then were earnest, but very flawed.

Add to this the simple fact that there's not much of anything left there that anyone in the outer world really wants. They don't have oil, they don't have minerals except for a plummeting gem situation. The forest is mostly all gone now. The natural splendor—not to mention the basic sustenance of most of the people—has largely been sacrificed to slash-and-burn agriculture. As a nation, they’re never going to make it on vanilla beans and sisal. They have to import practically everything.

My friends there are deeply worried. They say it’s never been this bad, and during the regime of Ratsiraka, the old Communist dictator, things were bad. Madagascar never used to be a violent place, but Tana is now a somewhat scary place. The gem mines are really frightening. The people in the bush who are pirating trees out of the parks used to be farmers, but there’s nowhere to farm anymore. If they had a real government, they would help, but there is no government. Will the world offer them aid? I hope so, but I doubt it. Places like Afghanistan and Pakistan have resources other people want, so they’ll get attention, for better or worse. The folks in Madagascar are in a real bad spot. Once these last trees are gone, what’s left? Red dirt, a ruined park, and a lot of desperate people.

If they had a real government, the Chinese (or their customers in the wood trade) would not be able to take the wood out. If they had a real government, they’d have land use policies that worked for the country. If they had a real government, they’d be eligible for aid from the outer world. The fact is, they don’t have a real government, and they don’t have many options left.

[Ned Knepp]

Paul,
We forget what we have here too easily. I have many friends that have spent years working in schools, clinics and hospitals in these kinds of places. From them I learned that there is only so much that can be done by outsiders. At some point the people/ government must deal with the situation or the nation will continue to slide toward oblivion. It is human nature to do what must be done to survive and I think it is probably true that the trees will continue to be cut until they are either gone or something drastic happens.

Ned