A respected instrument maker recently told me that he had heard that African blackwood, Dalbergia melanoxylon, was going to be listed in the CITES Appendix II, as of next January.
I scoured the CITES website (learned a great deal in the process!) but could find no support for such rumblings. Nor could I find, on the Canadian government or the U.S. government websites anything concerning any imminent restrictions on this tone wood.
Considering that an Appendix II listing would send shock waves through a wide range of instrument building and that no one I’ve talked to has heard anything, I can only conclude that the gentleman in question was either misinformed or had been imbibing a little too much of whatever lubricates his lathe.
Comments?
I thought this quote was interesting, since African Blackwood is undoubtedly selectively harvested for prime examples that display characteristics that are attractive to carvers, woodwind makers, etc..
"Many studies have been conducted and are ongoing by such conservation groups as Fauna and Flora International/SoundWood. One of the most informative is a Master’s dissertation written in 1995 by Hazel Sharman who received support from FFI. It is called “Investigation into the Sustainable Management of a Tropical Timber Tree Species, using Dalbergia Melanoxylon as a Case Study.” Speaking of the status of the tree, she writes, “Whilst it may not be biologically or ecologically threatened, it may well be commercially threatened. The constant removal of individuals with the same characteristics will be extremely harmful to the population structure, possibly resulting in genetic erosion. The end result may be a constant decline in the population until it is commercially extinct, leaving, if any, a population structure which may not be able to reproduce and that if it can, will reproduce individuals without those characteristics so highly prized by the trade and human society and a population weak and vulnerable to natural disaster and environmental change. There is a definite need for the implementation of an effective and applicable management strategy. What must be recognised is that utilisation of Dalbergia melanoxylon is not going to stop whether legally or illegally, but this utilisation should at the very least be managed and monitored. What must be addressed is how scientific knowledge can be mobilised most effectively to ensure the persistence and protection of the trade, and species itself.”
The potential future of various flute timbers is what has motivated me to experiment with other woods, especially domestic hardwoods that are reasonably abundant. And of course a certain amount of stockpiling of favorite woods is likely to happen if a wood becomes threatened. I used to buy cocobolo, but then I heard that it was threatened as a result of everyone using it as a substitute for less available woods (one supplier told me that “China was buying up everything” including cocobolo apparently). Shortly thereafter it was added to the CITIES list and I stopped sourcing it even though it is still commercially available. So now I have a bunch of cocobolo and there are restrictions on where you can ship such woods, or instruments made of such woods. My goal is to use it up while I can still legally make flutes from it!
However much I love some of these flute timbers like blackwood, if they are truly threatened I’d like to do my bit to avoid adding to the commercial demand. That is why I started experimenting with vacuum resin stabilized woods, in an attempt to find workable alternatives.
Article from Sep. 29, 2016. Becomes effective in 90 days.
“The Convention on the Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) summit on Thursday placed all 300 species of rosewood under trade restrictions, meaning criminals can no longer pass off illegally logged species as legitimate.”
It’s believed the launch of some musical instrument product lines (ie: possibly Guild guitars from the new plant in California) may be delayed due to material import concerns.
I started to read about this recently, including looking at the CITES documents. Apparently there are several levels of CITES protection from complete bans on commerce (such as for Elephant Ivory) to quotas allowing some harvesting and export of the raw material. All of the Rosewoods including African Blackwood will achieve some sort of listing but with varying degrees of protection and limitations depending upon species and locations. There will still be some commerce in it, especially with previously harvested, salvaged, etc. stock. Sending flutes in Blackwood across an international boundary should be okay for the time being.
In my own case, much of the Blackwood that I use was purchased from the stock of rejected wood from the Clarinet industry. I can simply select and cut around the problems and get beautiful wood out of it. Also my recent score of some 3000 clarinet body parts that can be reamed and outside turned into flute parts helps. All of this wood got into the commerce stream long before any talk of CITES protection.
I suspect that the effect will be to impose harvesting quotas, and export quotas for these timbers and none of this will affect our making and selling flutes from this timber. I know that it is rare to get logs of African Blackwood out of Africa. I wouldn’t bother with logs as I don’t have the capacity to mill these into squares and I don’t want to wait the 10-20 years before wood from these would be cured. I for one prefer the rejected wood that I get in square form as it is well cured and in some cases decades old. My supplier who is sitting on a large pile of this is just 3 hours south (Gilmer Wood) which is very convenient. I’ve asked Myles Gilmer what he might know about how the listing might affect things.
There is active replanting of Blackwood happening in Africa. The African Blackwood Conservation Project - check it out at http://www.blackwoodconservation.org
It may be of interest that just minutes ago I received an email from a maker of Northumbrian small pipes in the UK who reported that he had today received confirmation from his wood supplier that African blackwood is, in fact, going on CITES II. What is puzzling is, if this is true (and I’ve now received this information from two separate people) why is it not announced on the CITES website and other relevant sites?
The supplier added that providing documentation is all in order there should be no trouble with import/export, so long as the source can be proved legal. The move, apparently, is to clamp down in the illegal trade.
I am still a tad leary. I can see some customs official interpreting the regulations in a narrow-minded way and impounding an imported item.
Michael