Letter: Letters : Grow your own

From J. H. Sandom, Soil Association

Bristol

The foresters who reported to the American Association for the Advancement of
Science drew some rather disturbing conclusions from their work in the Chimanes
forest of lowland Bolivia (This Week, 22 February, p 10).

According to Bob Holmes’s report, the principal conclusion appeared to be
that selective “creaming” of the forests for mahogany should be condoned because
this reduces the value of the forest and thus permits the conservation
organisations to buy it back at knockdown prices.

Maybe we should be realistic in the face of commercial and institutional
greed and accept that such relatively low intensity creaming is the most
appropriate and sustainable form of logging that we are ever likely to achieve.
But this strategy does not solve the question raised in the first place: if we
want to preserve mahogany as a species, and the commercial trade that goes with
it, then we have to ensure that mahogany regenerates.

Current systems of exploitation are not permitting this and continued
exploitation will lead to mahogany’s progressive decline and ultimately to its
extinction. This has already happened to the closely related Swietenia
mahogani.

Surely the most logical conclusion to draw is that in order to ensure the
survival of mahogany as a commercially traded timber, we need to “domesticate”
it and grow it as a plantation species, at the same time moving the commercial
trade towards sourcing only from plantations.

Mahogany is a species that is clearly suited to a plantation environment: it
is tolerant of a wide range of site and soil types; it is an aggressive
coloniser, growing well in full sunlight but also tolerant of shade; it grows
well as a monoculture or as a part of a mixed species forest; and it is
malleable, responding well to conventional forest management and silvicultural
techniques.

If we really want to ensure mahogany’s survival, then we should look first at
the obvious and proven solutions before pursuing strategies which may ultimately
prove counterproductive.