US:Coffin Industry Targetted-Mahogany

[The.Greenbase@gb.greenpeace.org]

>> "DYING FOR MAHOGANY" GREENPEACE TARGETS COFFIN INDUSTRY TO     

 
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                    GREENPEACE PRESS RELEASE
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>> "DYING FOR MAHOGANY" GREENPEACE TARGETS COFFIN INDUSTRY TO     
   LAUNCH MAHOGANY BOYCOTT  
 
NEWPORT BEACH, California, March 9, 1995 (GP) The market for
mahogany in the United States is contributing to the death of
Brazilian Indians and tropical forests, says Greenpeace.
Beginning this week, the environment group is calling for a
boycott of mahogany wood products as part of their international
effort to protect tropical forests.  
 
     The "Dying for Mahogany" campaign will be launched at a
press conference and "funeral procession" on Thursday, March 9,
1995 at 9:30 a.m. in the Garden Room I, Hyatt Newporter Resort,
1107 Jamboree Road, Newport Beach, California.
 
     The dramatic funeral procession and press conference will
coincide with the International Wood Products Association's
(IHPA) Annual Convention, also at the Hyatt Newporter.  The IHPA
is a consortium of U.S. wood importers, including the largest
mahogany importers.  Some of these mahogany importers include
Robinson Lumber, Thompson Mahogany, Dan K. Moore, EAC Timbers
Americas, Pat Brown Lumber and Interforest Corp.  Robinson Lumber
also has a Brazilian subsidiary called Robco that exports
mahogany worldwide.  
     The funeral procession is a memorial to the Brazilian
Indians, including the Tikuna, who have either been murdered by
the mahogany loggers or who have died from introduced diseases
from the loggers.  At least nine Indian groups have been
jeopardized, even murdered, in mahogany related incidents.    
 
     It is a tragic irony that one of the uses of mahogany
in the U.S. is for making coffins. The coffins used by the
Greenpeace funeral procession have been made with 100 percent
post consumer and post agricultural waste material.
  
     Loggers who cut mahogany on Indian land and other protected
areas do so illegally, according to the Brazilian Constitution. 
The American public and wood users who buy mahogany are
unknowingly party to these illegal activities.  Some of the U.S.
importers get mahogany from Brazilian companies that have been
charged by Brazilian courts with illegally logging in indigenous
reserves.  
     Greenpeace's campaign aims to alert the U.S. public to these
 
criminal activities and forest destruction. The environmental
group, with nearly five million supporters globally, will press
toward a U.S. ban on mahogany imports until the trade is brought
under control.
 
      "The American public can help protect tropical forests and
indigenous people by refusing to buy purchases of mahogany 
furniture, panelling and even coffins," said Pamela Wellner,
Greenpeace forest campaigner.  "Until effective regulations and
are put into place and there is an assessment of the forest
damage  in the mahogany exporting countries there is simply no
other choice but to boycott mahogany."
 
     The U.S. is the largest importer of mahogany from Latin
America, the bulk of which comes from Brazil and Bolivia.  From
1990-1992 the annual average of mahogany imports was 108,000
cubic meters, equivalent to 28 football field stacked one yard
high.  
     Mahogany logging causes extreme degradation to the tropical
forests of Latin America, including the  Amazon rainforest.  For
every one mahogany tree cut at least 25 other trees are
destroyed.  Mahogany is sporadically dispersed throughout the
forest, causing a vast network of logging roads.
   
    A coalition of over 80 Brazilian environmental, indigenous 
peoples and human rights groups has stated: "Timber exploitation
in general, and particularly the selective logging of mahogany,
represents today the first step in the disorderly and destructive
occupation of the Amazon forest."
 
     Mahogany is considered to be an endangered species by the
national Brazilian environmental agency, IBAMA.  Of the three
different species of mahogany, two are already listed on the
Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species
(CITES).  The U.S. supported the listing of the third species, 
Swietenia macrophylla, at the 1994 CITES meeting last November. 
The proposal was six votes shy of the two thirds majority needed
to list the species to Appendix II.  Appendix II is not a ban on
trade but would have helped regulate it.  Brazil and Bolivia,
joined by the International Wood Products Association, were the
main opponents to the listing.
 
ENDS
  
Contact:  Cynthia Rust, Greenpeace Newsdesk, 206/632-4326