INTERNATIONAL
TIMBER DAY OF ACTION
MAY 11TH 1992
Please copy this and pass it on to other groups
In 1992 nearly all the mahogany leaving Brazil will come from
Indian and wildlife reserves. Most of it goes to Britain, the
world's biggest Brazilian mahogany buyer. Consumers in this
country are threatening the Indians of the southern Amazon with
extermination.
Brazilian mahogany is almost commercially extinct in the places
in which it can be legally cut. As a result the loggers have now
moved en masse into the reserves of the Indians, many of which
coincide with the belt of forest in which mahogany grows. The
effects of the cutting are devastating.
Groups such as the Guapore and Korubo are being hunted by the
timber cutters, who send in parties of gunmen ahead of their
machines to murder any Indians who might stand in their way. The
Guapore, having fled from place to place through their forest to
avoid the killers, are now trapped between nine sawmills, and
their continued survival is a matter of doubt.
Other groups have been deceived into signing illegal contracts
with the cutters. In some cases the timbermen have arrived in
pick up trucks full of cheap merchandise and distributed it to
the Indians. They have then returned a few weeks later - claiming
that the goods had been sold to the Indians on credit - to
collect their "debts" in the form of timber.
Others have worked on individual Indians, tempting them with
trucks, alcohol and prostitutes to sign contracts which pay the
Indians one thousandth of the eventual value of the mahogany cut.
These deals have destroyed both the forests and the social unity
of the Indian communities.
Mahogany logging is the most destructive of all forms of timber
cutting. As the trees are thinly dispersed through the forest, in
order to reach them the cutters have to open vast networks of
roads. These cause an enormous amount of damage: one study
calculates that that for every tree removed, 1450 square metres
of forest canopy are destroyed by the loggers' bulldozers. They
also allow small farmers into the Indians' forests, who complete
the destruction the timber cutters began.
The cutting is now completely out of control. The loggers have
become so powerful that when the Brazilian Secretary of State for
the Environment started investigating them in March this year,
the President was forced to sack him. Brazilian officials claim
that there is nothing they can do to restrict the supply
of mahogany, and have pleaded with British campaigners to try to
stop the demand.
May 11th 1992 is an International Timber Day of Action, calling
for a moratorium of the mahogany trade. On BBC2 that evening the
Open Space series traces mahogany taken from Indian reserves back
to importers and retailers in Britain. Survival International,
Friends of the Earth and several local groups have actions
planned in London, Oxford, Bristol and other cities.
At 1.15pm members of Survival International and Friends of the
Earth will be meeting outside the Timber Trade Federation, which
represents many of this country's mahogany importers, at 26
Oxendon Street, off Picadilly. They will be delivering a letter
to the Federation, and explaining to the press and television
cameras that the trade in Brazilian mahogany is a trade in human
lives.
What you can do
Please come to the demonstration at the TTF, or join actions
planned in your area (see below for contact number). If there are
none planned where you live, start one yourself.
Persuade timber retailers to stop stocking mahogany and all
tropical timbers which do not come from genuinely sustainable
sources. While the environmental claims of nearly all the
tropical hardwood traders in this country are bogus, there are a
very few selling wood whose cutting helps to protect the forest
and its people, rather than to destroy them. The best example is
the Ecological Trading Company, working with communities in
Ecuador, Mexico and Papua New Guinea. Don't buy tropical timber
unless it comes from the ETC.
For more information, contact Ruth McCoy, 36 Matlock Court,
[ The article text ends here. Ruth lives somewhere in the U.K. You
can write to the poster of the article (see address in Original-
Sender line above) for more information. --Gary ]