Like it or not many of our fancy hardwoods are deforesting our great world treasures. I am guilty of this going to the wood store and buying fancy rainforest wood. When you see the wood sitting there it is hard to make the relationship between the tree thousands of miles away that was cut down. Most of this wood is harvested questionably even though the supplier says it comes from a legit source.
We as purchasers of pipes need to be more aware and request viable alternatives. My new chanter was made of plumwood a very nice wood that does not kill our rainforests. You can argue that pipes do not take much wood, but when you add up the thousands of uilleann pipes that will soon be as common as highland pipes the number adds up, and our dollars fuel the illegal cutting and deforestation.
We can help by not buying these woods and demanding that sustainable woods are used when making our pipes that do not come from the world’s rainforests, plus pestering our pipemakers to be more concious. Our little discretionary hardwood purchases add up and fuel the global cutting. There are many nice woods out there from better sources.
The results show that carbon storage is strongly influenced by the types of trees present and the ways in which they are lost. Selective logging of prized hardwoods removes a small number of species from a forest. But it substantially reduces the forest’s above-ground carbon storage because the lost wood is dense.
I’m having trouble figuring out the logic in this–shurely, the carbon in the dense log is just as sunk as it ever was as long as the tree hasn’t been burned whether that wood is in the rainforest or in a set of pipes.
And the sudden hole in the canopy gives a chance for the big tree’s scions to race for all that sudden sun, thereby sinking a whole lot more carbon.
The solution is to research where your wood comes from. African Blackwood, Honduran Rosewood, Bloodwood, Liptus and certain types of Ebony are all harvested responsibly from plantations. If you get wood from areas where it is harvested irresponsibly, then you may share in some guilt. I found out where maccassar ebony comes from and have a nagging pictuer of a homeless orangutan haunting me. Beyond that, once the wood is in the shop is it worse to let it go to waste?
Marc
I’m as guilty as most other pipers so I’m not claiming any high ground.
But I would like to emphasise the link here that once they wood is in the shop and you buy it, you are driving the economic process that leads to harvesting of tropical hardwoods, illegal or otherwise, sustainable or otherwise.
New satellite photography analysis of the Amazon rain forest has just shown deforestation has been under estimated by 60%.
The original post was mostly about rainforest woods. African blackwood grows on dry grasslands, not in rainforests.
Do not take this as a lack of concern on my part - I am very concerned about the rainforests and all of nature.
But also consider this - if people stop buying African blackwood, countries like Kenya will not see it as economicly important and will not strive to protect its existence. This is sort of the same argument that cows are so prevalent in the world today, not because of their superiority as a species but because they are, well, tasty. If we all just ate chicken, cows would become endangered.
We need to support sensible harvesting and replanting and do whatever we can so that the countries with these woods protect them as valuable economic resources. I am not sure how to do that from here but buying from known “safe” sources, sounds good.
On the topic of rainforests, the selective removal of expensive species hurts the ecosystem by reducing diversity but does not deforest the Amazon. What I have read says that the general shrinking of the rainforests is mostly due to clear cutting to produce more farm land, in Brazil it is clear cut so they can raise cattle. Hmm, maybe we SHOULD stop eating cows. Now my brain hurts.
John Liestman (Masters thesis was on biodiversity in coastal Southern California, user of African blackwood rejects from the clarinet industry)
“[African Blackwood] in the west is used to manufacture woodwind instruments. The loss of the export and carving industries in Tanzania would devastate local economies and would be disastrous for instrument manufacturers in the west”
Let’s back up a bit. The topic is: Killing the rainforest with our pipes
At first, I thought the music was affecting the growth of trees!!
What percent of the of the exotic wood usage does Uilleann pipemaking represent? Not GHB, not inferior Pakistani manufacturing, no clarinets or oboes… but genuine hand crafted instruments of quality.
I pose a few questions/comments:
What woods being used for Uilleann pipes are the ones hurting the forests?
Would you say (on a global basis) all Uilleann pipemakers combined produce about 200-300 sets of pipes per year?
Isn’t there regulation involved, like one can only purchase so much of the wood, after that, you can’t buy any more?
At least the rainforest wood is going toward something productive to society, and is preserved for many generations. This is an alternative rather than making pencils out of it, which gets ground up and thrown in the trash.
I personally don’t see a problem with_relevent_diversion from the thread title. IMHO the best discussions are never that narrow and new information can often throw up a more appropriate line for the conversation.
I was interested to learn that African Blackwood grows in open woodland and not the rainforest.
As African Blackwood is one of the main wood used in Uilleann pipemaking and does not grow in the rainforest, I would be pleased to see the discussion widened to, say “Damaging the environment with our pipes”?
I think this is a bit of a snow job. From what I have read, the rainforests are being cleared for agriculture, not harvesting for timber. In other words, the woods were going to come down any ways. In South America, the Amazon rainforests have been shrinking for decades, not only because the peasants want land for farming, but because they don’t use any sort of soil management. There is no concept of fertilizing or soil culture. When the soil fails, they just drop and burn more forest, like it will never end. I have read that in Africa, they burn out the natural grasslands where ebony grows for agricultural use. The heat from the grass fires cracks the wood before it can even be harvested for timber, so it is useless for instruments.
Its easier for authorities to pick on the smallest, weakest party (wood for musical instruments) than to address the real issues. This makes it “appear” that they are doing something when they aren’t truly being effective at all. I would not stop instrument making. It is probably a last opportunity to leave a legacy of fine instruments. The forests are going to be destroyed anyways, so we might as well take the last few scraps we can, rather than let it all be wasted.
Well, regardles of the arguments to & fro, we can be in no doubt from whence the problem originated in the first place!
George W. Bush
Yes, the same man who invented the class 5 hurricane.
The article points out that this is an at least partially mistaken belief. Developments in satellite imaging have shown that along with the easily detected clearcutting, there is also a great deal or selective logging going on, which we were unable to see before with the technology of the time.
So the question is what kind of damage does selective logging do?
This pretty much confirms the contention that majority of the deforestation is for agricultural use and then compounded by bad agricultural practices. Musical instruments consume a small amount of raw materials and have a long lifetime. If responsibly harvested wood is used, they should be an example of using scarce resouorces wisely.
Woods used for musical instruments command an exceptional price when compared to local and global incomes. As a result responsible harvesting is very difficult to monitor.
Between 65,000 and 100,000 Blackwood clarinets and oboes are produced each year. The vast majority of which are clarinets. The same article states a professional clarinet has a life of about 6 years.
If woods commonly used for Uilleann Pipes construction become endangered enough to go onto CITES (Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species) appendices, we could all suffer dramatically.
CITES Appendix I listed species are monitored by customs and cannot easily be moved across international borders. This even applies when the wood has been made into a set of pipes.
“Environmentalists commonly stress the fact that there is not only a biological incentive to protecting the rainforest, but also an economic one. One square kilometer in the Peruvian Amazon has been calculated to have a value of $682,000 if intact forest is sustainably harvested for fruits, latex, and timber; $100,000 if clear-cut for commercial timber (not sustainably harvested); or $14,800 if used as cattle pasture.”
D’Oh!!! Grenadillo IS aftrican blackwood -
Name
African Blackwood (Dalbergia melanoxylon)
Type
Hardwood.
Other Names
Also known as Mozambique ebony, Senegal ebony,
mpingo, grenadillo, banbanus, ebene, mufunjo, and
Congowood.
