Where Angels Fear To Tread

Do you recall the raid on Gibson Guitars over sup­pos­edly ille­gal wood that even the orig­i­nal source coun­try doesn’t deem is ille­gal but the fed­eral gov­ern­ment did? Recall that Martin Guitars uses the same woods for their gui­tars but didn’t get raided?

I found this report from 2007 that sug­gests that Walmart actu­ally does sell woods that are ille­gal and are vio­lat­ing the same law that Gibson was raided for. This doesn’t appear to have yet earned Walmart a visit from the Feds.

An EIA sur­vey found 66 dif­fer­ent wood prod­ucts being sold in Wal-​mart that are made in Indonesia, where 73% of the log­ging is ille­gal, accord­ing to their own Forest Minister.

…wood in Wal-Mart’s prod­ucts comes from some of the world’s hotspots of ille­gal log­ging, includ­ing the Russian Far East, Indonesia, and parts of Central and South America. As long as Wal-​Mart con­tin­ues to turn a blind eye to its wood sources, its cus­tomers are at risk of sup­port­ing crim­i­nal tim­ber syn­di­cates and for­est habi­tat destruc­tion through their pur­chase of basic home goods.