Agency says forests in Asia cut illegally for some U.S. flooring

JAKARTA, Indonesia — A variety of hardwood threatened in Southeast Asia is showing up in flooring in the United States, where manufacturers, distributors and retailers are failing to ensure the wood's legal origin, the Environmental Investigation Agency said in a report released today.

Flooring made from merbau, a dark, luxurious red wood found mostly in Indonesia but also elsewhere in Southeast Asia, is being sold in U.S. home-improvement stores, according to the nonprofit agency, based in London and Washington.

"Deep red, orange, and brown hues accentuate the exotic beauty of this tropical treasure from Indonesia," read the text on a merbau display at Lowe's in New Carrollton, Md., an agency investigator said. A similar display of "valuable, exotic" merbau was seen at The Home Depot in Washington, D.C.

Representatives of U.S. retail stores said the vast majority of their wood comes from North America, where there is no problem verifying the product's origin.

Merbau is mostly found in Papua, an Indonesian province on New Guinea island whose merbau forests have been ravaged by illegal logging.

Last year, before a government crackdown, 300,000 cubic meters of merbau logs were being smuggled out of Papua each month, worth about $600 million at retail flooring prices, the Environmental Investigation Agency reported. Indonesia banned all log exports in 2001 in an effort to protect its forests, which have the world's highest deforestation rate.

Illegal logging in Indonesia is destroying one of the world's most important remaining tracts of undisturbed tropical forest, the agency said in its report, "Behind the Veneer: How Indonesia's Last Rainforests are being Felled for Flooring."

Despite the Indonesian government's crackdown, thousands of acres of Indonesian forests are felled illegally every day — outside of concessions or in protected areas — to supply factories across Asia, the agency reported.

The world's largest wood-flooring company is Armstrong World Industries, a U.S.-based firm that recorded $832 million in worldwide sales of wood flooring in 2004, the agency said. The top four companies in North America and Europe had combined worldwide sales of $1.46 billion in 2004, the latest year for which the organization could obtain statistics.

"There is no indication that any of these companies have broken any law — nor is there evidence that they are fully aware of the potential origin of the wood they are supplying," the report stated.

"But our investigations have shown that ... these companies have no idea precisely where most of the merbau wood used in their flooring comes from — nor have they made much effort to find out."

Armstrong, Lowe's and Home Depot disputed the agency's assertions. In a telephone interview, an Armstrong executive said the company insists suppliers sign contracts to provide wood products only in accordance with local government rules and regulations and must provide "chain of custody" documents indicating the material's source.

Frank Ready, president of Armstrong's North American flooring division, also said the company's merbau flooring is a composite that uses merbau only for the top layer, requiring a total volume of fewer than 120 merbau logs a year.

A spokeswoman for Lowe's, Karen Cobb, said in an e-mail that after an October review of its merbau-flooring product, Lowe's decided to "exit the program."

Similarly, a corporate vice president at Home Depot, Ron Jarvis, said the company will discontinue its merbau-flooring lines this spring. The main reason, he said, is that merbau sales are very low.

The United States has no law banning products derived from illegally cut timber, though the Lacey Act bars the import or sale of wildlife or wildlife products killed or captured in violation of U.S. or any foreign law.

A marketing officer for PT Tanjung Kreasi, an Indonesian supplier whose merbau is sold to Armstrong, said Kreasi buys wood from a Papua supplier who provides legal documents.

But she said she did not know precisely where the wood came from.