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My September issue of National Geographic came yesterday. It contains an extensive article on Madagascar's catastrophic ecological plundering, and a detailed description of the illicit rosewood trade that makes for sobering reading. I doubt you guys will enjoy the article, but what's there needs to be said, and read. I'm sure most of us will find it compelling.

chris

This topic has been thrashed out pretty well over on the Frets site. It's a very complex issue - so mind the gap.

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"Building guitars looks hard, but it's actually much harder than it looks." Tom Buck

The thing that really bugs me though about these type of articles is how the authors often advocate for the trees and the forests over the PEOPLE who live there. These folks are fighting to stay alive and I really don't think it is much of a decision between the trees and the people. I don't think that people should be reckless with resources, but this issue is fueled by the meltdown of their economy and political stability which forced people to find other sources of income.

All that said... this discussion is a tinder box for going "political" and getting shut down. So let's try to keep it to the issues and not about the politics of ecology.

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Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

Agreed, at the extreme some ideologies profess that the world would be better without humans, or most of them in any case. Who gets to stay is another question…
OTOH it is hard to imagine how a people can build a brighter future on top of an irreversibly damaged environment (case in point: Easter Island or even Haiti).

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Laurent Brondel
West Paris, Maine - USA
http://www.laurentbrondel.com/

I agree with you. It is a tragedy to wreck an ecology for short term need. But I see the "fix" as repairing the economy and the stability of the government. Not clamping down on one of the few markets they have open to them. That just creates events triggered by the law of unintended consequences.

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Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

Laurent, it sounds like you have read Jared Diamond's book.

"Collapse" is a mammoth work on just this topic, and is highly recommended.

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"Building guitars looks hard, but it's actually much harder than it looks." Tom Buck

I have wondered about Easter Island so many times. Yes, the inhabitents denuded the island. Why can't we plant some trees there?

Mike

Absolutely, although I am skeptical about some of his assumptions.
Ecology is as complex a science as climate. If it was only a matter of replanting trees, deforestation on a large scale wouldn't be such a tragedy. However, very few regions are like northern New-England, where the forest can be mowed multiple times, and regrow. Of course, some of the habitat of the primeval forest will never come back, but some will, and most actually does. Other ecologies, especially in the tropical and sub tropical regions are much more unforgiving and fragile. In a nutshell, in a lot of places, once the rainforest is gone, it is gone. Many reasons: the soil loses much of its nutrients by oxidation, the original ecology is gone, it is a mutual dependance between vegetals and animals.

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Laurent Brondel
West Paris, Maine - USA
http://www.laurentbrondel.com/

Conditions differ widely among the places where forests are endangered. I think part of the point of the National Geo article is that the illegal timber trade in Madagascar overwhelmingly benefits (in Madagascar) a handful of wealthy men, while the loggers in the field get paid minimally. Minimal may be better than nothing, but the resource is hardly being used for the general benefit of a needy people.

At least this article didn't repeat the ridiculous claim of some Botany professor in an earlier Geo piece who "researched" where the wood goes by Googling "Madagascar rosewood" and noting that almost all the hits on the first two pages (after which he ended his "research") were about guitars. More responsible investigation has shown 98.5% of the rosewood logs taken from Madagascar go to China, for use in their furniture industry. That is where the real profit from illegal logging in Madagascar is made.

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Howard Klepper
http://www.klepperguitars.com

When all else fails, clean the shop.