Consumers must stop forest destruction (BBC:Viewpoint/Green Room)

[eppur_se_muova]

VIEWPOINT
John Nelson

Most DIY enthusiasts would be shocked to find that their new garden decking helped to increase the poverty of hunter-gatherer communities in the Congo Basin of Central Africa.

What about the recently purchased hardwood table and chairs? Did these come from a 300-year-old tree that, until cut down for export to Europe, supplied a hundred poor people in Cameroon with oil, protein and medicine?

Armed with this knowledge, would the customers' new furniture be quite so comfortable?

Ngola Baka typifies Pygmy hunter-gatherer communities in Cameroon; it is small, remote, cash-poor and surrounded by small fields of manioc and plantain to supplement a varied and healthy forest diet based upon meat, fish, fruits, nuts, honey, leaves and mushrooms.

Since there is no dispensary, and little money, medicines are found in the forest, in the barks, roots and leaves gathered during hunting and gathering excursions up to 20km (12 miles) away.
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more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7239328.stm

There's a section at the bottom for comments, where one of our compatriots informs us that "The problem here in America, is that we have hundreds of enviornmental laws that will not allow logging of US trees. We have the same amount of trees here in the US then we did hundreds of years ago. What these enviornmentalists don't relaize is that when you chop down US trees, you order new ones to be planted." :puke: Same number of trees. Right.:eyes:

[hendo]

1. And this is why

I use Trex because they use recycled wood and composites

and why I am very supportive of companies like Cellfor that are growing trees to help replenish the forests cut down for paper products.

[eppur_se_muova]

2. Thanks for the links.

Bamboo would seem to be a more easily replenished resource than timber for furniture and other small housewares.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=bamboo+products&btnG=Google+Search

I know most of the "replanting" done by the timber companies tends to be pretty perfunctory -- not many seedlings survive.

[hendo]

3. ooo..

I forgot about bamboo, I love bamboo.