Thread: Bois de Rose

What a disgrace those 'government' officials are. That article just made me even more frustrated that i can't buy so much as a few measly pen blanks of the stuff from old stocks in the US, and yet in its home country (and in the major market countries throughout Asia) this so called 'protected' species is being abused and logged to the point that in 40 years or so there's a good chance it'll be completely extinct.

What's the point in CITES even existing if they're not going to do anything about this sort of thing? Much in all as i do like elephants and rhinos, there are a great many other species that are in need of a little care and attention too. At the very least they could set up a few off limits 'plantations' in more stable countries with similar climates, simply to ensure that these plant species aren't completely wiped off the face of the planet, or almost as bad, that the few remainders aren't simply the genetically inferior ones that might potentially yield terrible quality wood in a century or more once they're of a decent size and things are (hopefully but realistically probably not) more stable.

For red sandalwood at least, (aka the original Zitan wood, and the wood that bois de rose is now being used in place of) China in particular has a rather bad reputation for conservation, as it seems historically they wiped out their own populations of it several centuries ago, and gradually crept further across into other countries and wiped their forests of it bare as well.