UPI
NAGOYA, Japan, Oct. 26 (UPI) -- Chinese demand for exotic hardwood and political unrest in Madagascar drive illegal logging threatening that island nation's hardwood forests, a report says.
The report by Global Witness and the Environment Investigation Agency was presented at the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity meeting in Nagoya, Japan, the BBC reported.
Investigators said an estimated 98 percent of illegally harvested hardwood from Madagascar ends up in China, much of it in luxury reproduction furniture that can fetch extraordinary prices, like $1 million for a bed made of exotic woods.
The problem is made worse by Madagascar's chaotic political situation, split between factions of ex-President Marc Ravalomanana and the rival who ousted him in a 2009 coup, Andry Rajoelina.
The illegal extraction of timber is flourishing amidst the political tug-of-war, the EIA/Global Witness report found.
"The pre-existing problem of illegal logging was turned into a flood of tree-cutting in national parks, and a flood of wood out of Madagascar to China and the West," Alexander von Bismarck, EIA's executive director, says.
http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2010/10/26/Illegal-logging-thins-Madagascar-forests/UPI-73641288141512/
NAGOYA, Japan, Oct. 26 (UPI) -- Chinese demand for exotic hardwood and political unrest in Madagascar drive illegal logging threatening that island nation's hardwood forests, a report says.
The report by Global Witness and the Environment Investigation Agency was presented at the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity meeting in Nagoya, Japan, the BBC reported.
Investigators said an estimated 98 percent of illegally harvested hardwood from Madagascar ends up in China, much of it in luxury reproduction furniture that can fetch extraordinary prices, like $1 million for a bed made of exotic woods.
The problem is made worse by Madagascar's chaotic political situation, split between factions of ex-President Marc Ravalomanana and the rival who ousted him in a 2009 coup, Andry Rajoelina.
The illegal extraction of timber is flourishing amidst the political tug-of-war, the EIA/Global Witness report found.
"The pre-existing problem of illegal logging was turned into a flood of tree-cutting in national parks, and a flood of wood out of Madagascar to China and the West," Alexander von Bismarck, EIA's executive director, says.
http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2010/10/26/Illegal-logging-thins-Madagascar-forests/UPI-73641288141512/