Your opinion in using Threatend/Endangered woods?

[Tetsuaiga]

I've recently decided it doesn't feel right to use these species.

I wonder why they're pretty easy to get hold of though, blackwood, ebony, wenge, many more for example.

Does it make any difference to you if the wood comes from somewhere it's certified? I imagine it probably is quite easy to have documents fairly signed in many of the countries these timbers come from. Just using the wood even if it is ethically sourced still encourages the admiration of it.

I have some planks of wenge that now I now not sure I want to use. I suppose the only option is to sell it to someone else or just use it but resolve not to buy more again.

I'd like to hear what others think about the issue.

 

[sunnybob]

Ask yourself what will happen to all the wood YOU wont work with.

Will someone else use it (oh yes)
Will the foresters stop cutting it (oh no, or they wont be able to feed their families)
Will the land developers stop cutting it (oh no, because then they couldnt build houses for the people who want to buy them. And if they couldnt sell it, they would burn it or just landfill it).

There is no way you can change the world, Not even if every woodworker in the world switched to just going out and hugging trees instead of making stuff.

Use it, and maybe feel a little sad, but dont stand back and let it be burnt or buried.

 

[MikeG.]

........There is no way you can change the world, Not even if every woodworker in the world switched to just going out and hugging trees instead of making stuff........

That's not very logical, sb. If no-one buys the stuff, it has no value and won't be cut down.

If it's on the CITES list, it's illegal to trade it. If people carry on buying it, all they are doing is enabling and encouraging criminal activity. If people stick to using wood from certified sources, they strengthen the certification schemes (such as FSC), spreading knowledge of it amongst consumers and suppliers. Eventually suppliers will be pressurised into better practises by the spread of such schemes, because if all consumers demand certified timber they'll have no choice but to supply it.

As to the idea in the OP........it's the act of buying the wood in the first place which is where the mistake was made. What you do with it now is irrelevant.

 

[sunnybob]

You missed the point. almost all of the forests around the world are being chopped down for farming and houses. that wood is doomed. End of story. If it cant be sold it WILL be burned. Logging for export actually makes some use of the wood and gives local people income. Without buying the wood you are condemning the locals to poverty. It is your DUTY to buy wood.
=D> =D> :shock:

 

[MikeG.]

Almost as if illegal logging for timber isn't a thing.......

 

[Marineboy]

You missed the point. almost all of the forests around the world are being chopped down for farming and houses. that wood is doomed. End of story. If it cant be sold it WILL be burned. Logging for export actually makes some use of the wood and gives local people income. Without buying the wood you are condemning the locals to poverty. It is your DUTY to buy wood.
=D> =D> :shock:

On that logic then we should be encouraging African poachers to keep killing elephants and rhinos so they can keep selling their body parts to the Chinese.

 

[Beau]

I went to a great talk on this subject hosted by David Savage some years back. Both sides put forward fantastic cases but to honest I left none the wiser. It was a classic chicken or egg argument. Personally I stopped using exotics apart from what I had in stock and I only use these for details now. I used to be pretty naive on the whole matter. I used to by rosewood and wondered why it came with a machined groove in it. Later found selling what was classed as a product got around CITES protection

 

[Phil Pascoe]

That's why you can buy oddly shaped little blocks of backwood - they're sold a clarinet bell blanks.

I did read albeit a long time ago that 90% of what was felled in Brazil was burnt, and the the UK took only 1% of the remaining 10% - most of the rest (at that time) went to Japan for single use building shuttering etc. You can probably substitute China for Japan now.
Much of what is cut now is cut to clear land for palm oil production and other food crops so how much difference in the greater scheme of things does cabinet making make? If we make the stuff valueless I suppose there is an argument to say that would make it more likely to be destroyed rather than less?

 

[sunnybob]

You missed the point. almost all of the forests around the world are being chopped down for farming and houses. that wood is doomed. End of story. If it cant be sold it WILL be burned. Logging for export actually makes some use of the wood and gives local people income. Without buying the wood you are condemning the locals to poverty. It is your DUTY to buy wood.
=D> =D> :shock:

On that logic then we should be encouraging African poachers to keep killing elephants and rhinos so they can keep selling their body parts to the Chinese.

No, that is not logic.

Poachers ONLY kill to sell to chinese (and other nationals of course). If those people didnt buy, then poaching would stop.
Trees are burnt to clear land for people to live and to eat.
using your logic, you have to ban the people. Wipe out the people, you wipe out the demand for cleared land, and you save the trees.

 

[MikeG.]

......Trees are burnt to clear land for people to live and to eat...........

This simply isn't the case, Bob. That happens in Malaysia and South East Asia, but it isn't what is happening in South America or Africa. You are generalising too much. Illegal logging for timber is the major driver of tree loss in west, central and southern Africa. We're only a year or two away from there not being a single stand of mature trees left in Mozambique, and that is driven entirely, 100%, by the Chinese demand for cheap timber.

Wenge, as discussed in the OP, is from west and central Africa. There is no central government with control outside the capitals in the DRC or CAR. Every tree cut there is illegal, and the felling is on a massive industrial scale.....again, most of it for timber or pulp, and almost none of it for the land or for palm oil production. That felling which isn't driven by logging is for mining operations, again, all (or almost all), illegal.

 

[MikeG.]

......... Poachers ONLY kill to sell to chinese (and other nationals of course)............

Sorry, Bob, but this is twaddle. Most poaching in Africa is for the bushmeat trade, and is sold to locals.

 

[sunnybob]

Mike, if its sold to and eaten by locals, I dont feel too strongly about that. If the alternative for the locals is to starve, while they watch elephants destroying their crops, then I'm on their side. I have been to africa, I have seen what a large herd of elephants can do to crops and surprisingly even trees, where they eat only the small new shoots at the top of the tree, but snap the branches in half to get to them (I was kept awake for a whole night once while a herd of them destroyed a small copse of trees nearby. When daylight came, I saw trees with 6" trunks ripped down the middle as if struck by lightning).
But thats somewhat of a diversion. However you look at it, its PEOPLE who are causing the loss of trees. Whatever the nationality, the wood is in demand.
What a half dozen, or even several thousand hobby woodworkers buy, is neither here nor there.

 

[Beau]

What a half dozen, or even several thousand hobby woodworkers buy, is neither here nor there.

Utter rubbish. You cant absolve responsibility with an argument that weak. Anyway there are plenty of pros using greater quantities on here anyway.

It may be a drop in the ocean but the ocean is made up of lots of tiny drops.

 

[Marineboy]

Mike, if its sold to and eaten by locals, I dont feel too strongly about that. If the alternative for the locals is to starve, while they watch elephants destroying their crops, then I'm on their side. I have been to africa, I have seen what a large herd of elephants can do to crops and surprisingly even trees, where they eat only the small new shoots at the top of the tree, but snap the branches in half to get to them (I was kept awake for a whole night once while a herd of them destroyed a small copse of trees nearby. When daylight came, I saw trees with 6" trunks ripped down the middle as if struck by lightning).
But thats somewhat of a diversion. However you look at it, its PEOPLE who are causing the loss of trees. Whatever the nationality, the wood is in demand.
What a half dozen, or even several thousand hobby woodworkers buy, is neither here nor there.

Perhaps we were wrong to get rid of bear-baiting as we then deprived the bears' owners of a living.

 

[doctor Bob]

Peoples attitudes have to change, to read SB's posts makes me realise we have a long way to go.

 

[transatlantic]

Supply and demand, surely?

If enough people do the right thing, demand goes down, supply goes down.

Although I do appreciate that in some cases, forestry is being cut down for other means (mostly farming as far as I know).

 

[Lons]

Personally I wouldn't buy endangered woods for any sizeable project however it's sometimes tempting to ignore that for small items such as a pen blank though I do try as it's easy to find heavily figured alternatives.

That said, I have a pretty large collection of hard to obtain wood, most of which is at least 30 - 40 years old so have more than enough for my needs for the rest of my life and see absolutely nothing wrong in using that stock, what would I do otherwise, throw it on the fire? :roll:
Same applies to reclaimed furniture, it's there already and a resource that would be criminal to waste whether a currently controlled species or not.

I don't agree with Sunny Bobs general comment but understand where he's coming from, it's a much more complicated matter than just woodworkers changing habits and what we do in our small way won't change the Asian practices or the UK public from buying cheap overseas furniture made from materials of dubious origin.

 

[MikeG.]

........ If the alternative for the locals is to starve......

It isn't. This is a false choice. Africans aren't starving, albeit in some war zones there are issues about food availability. Bushmeat is a sort-after middle-class product. There's plenty enough beef and chicken produced in Africa such that bushmeat isn't a necessity. Much of Africa relies on fish for protein, as it has for millennia.

 

[Lons]

........ If the alternative for the locals is to starve......

It isn't. This is a false choice. Africans aren't starving, albeit in some war zones there are issues about food availability. Bushmeat is a sort-after middle-class product. There's plenty enough beef and chicken produced in Africa such that bushmeat isn't a necessity. Much of Africa relies on fish for protein, as it has for millennia.

One of the things I noticed when in South Africa is there wasn't any sign of road kills, the locals told me that it isn't just the wildlife that picks it up but the local people as well

I saw a lot of people I wouldn't wish to meet in a dark place but little evidence of real poverty even around the shanty town outside Cape Town there was food and reasonably clothed residents, just the accommodation that was dire.

 

[MikeG.]

.......... I have seen what a large herd of elephants can do to crops and surprisingly even trees, where they eat only the small new shoots at the top of the tree, but snap the branches in half to get to them..........

I don't know why you're talking about elephants. There are hundreds of other species being poached every day of the week.

BTW, elephants are down to less than 3% of their numbers from only 100 years ago, when they were already in sharp decline due to ivory hunting. They weren't causing destruction of woodland then, despite being far, far more numerous, because they weren't concentrated in year-round isolated pockets, but free to migrate. On the contrary, woodland back then was in fine shape, despite vastly more elephants. Africa is shaped by elephants, not destroyed by them. And if you are surprised that elephants eat trees, I really have no words in response. (They don't only eat the small shoots, either.)