Mahogany, what's left in Brazil

[AKarab@aol.com]

A post I hope is of interest, The Seattle Times printed an LA Times article
May 21, 1995 under the headline: Brazil officials try to prevent violence
over mahogoany,  and the misleading byline: Asain firm, determined loggers
face belligerent tribe.  Belem, Brazil:
. . . .
      "About 100 loggers and their families had invaded the Arara Indian
reservation deep in the Amazon forest 300 miles southwest of this northern
city. . . .
      The way the scenario usually goes, gold or the prospect of riches is
believed to exist on one of the many reservations set aside for Brazil's
320,000 Indians.  Prospectors, often just local Brazilians trying to scratch
out a life, rush in illegally to grab what they hope will be their share of
the wealth.
      This time the riches are not shiny metal but a precious wood.  The
Arara reservation, an area slightly more than twice the size of LA, is home
to one of the world's last remaining mahogany forests.
      The invasion has pitted 120 Araras, members of a particularly
aggressive tribe that had no formal relations with Brazilians until 1980,
against well-armed, hard-bitten loggers.
      [the report continues regarding the history of violency by the miners
in the past and the vulnerability of the Indian population to decimation.] .
. . .
      While government officials attempt to remove squatters from the Arara
land, they will also be investigating reports that the encroachment is
actually the work of city officials in Medicilandia, a frontier town of
25,000, with only one telephone, that sits on the edge of the Arara
reservation. [ the telephone or the town?  just kidding!]
     According to the reports, the loggers are being sponsored by Mayor Joao
Batista Barbieri and City Council members with the backing of some of
Brazil's large logging companies.
     Barbieri has been supplying trucks to loggers so they can bring mahogany
out of the forest and then sell it to the huge national logging concerns, . .
..


I found this interesting because while I knew mahogany was a tropical wood
and considered about to become used up, I rarely find info about where it is,
or statements about how much is left.  Certainly is great for hammers, but
hammer makers usually don't know much about the limits of the resource when I
check with them about where they get it from, American lumber suppliers may
also not know, or look the other way.

<<Sigh>>, I really don't like hornbeam.

Audrey Karabinus,   Seattle