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ILLEGAL MAHOGANY EXPORT TO U.S.A. THREATENS RARE SPECIES
THREE US AGENCIES SUED
More than 80% of the mahogany illegally logged in Peru ends up in the home of Americans with excellent taste in furniture, but who could give a rats ass about anything else. On June 6, 2006, two Peruvian indigenous groups and the Natural Resources Defense Council filed a suite agains three US regulatory agencies: The Department of Homeland Security, the Department of the Interior, the Department of Agriculture. Also named are three U.S. importers - Bozovich Timber Products of Evergreen, Alabama; T. Baird International Corporation of King of Prussia, Pennsylvania; and TBM Hardwoods of Hanover, Pennsylvania. The suit claims that the agencies are failing to enforce international law.
Centre Stockage de la Manche

"Millions of dollars worth of Peruvian mahogany enters U.S. ports every year in violation of U.S. and international law," said Ari Hershowitz, NRDC's Latin America BioGems project director. "While U.S. border control agencies look the other way, the rainforest and the communities that depend on them to survive are being plundered."
According to the NRDC, the illegal trade is contributing to the severe depletion of the desirable wood, which may become commercially extinct within the next decade.

Read the NRDC Press Release.
Return to deforestation map.