Chinese demand for an endangered tropical hardwood tree used to make luxury flooring is driving it to extinction, Greenpeace said Tuesday. China imported about 60,000 cubic metres (2.1 million cubic feet) of merbau logs in 2006, most of it smuggled from Papua New Guinea and Indonesia, the environmental group said in a report.
The wood was used mostly to produce high-end hardwood flooring for the domestic market and exports to the US, Canada, Japan, Australia and Europe, it said.
"This is a highly prized species for luxury goods and the market demand in China as well as in Europe, North America and Asia Pacific is driving merbau to extinction," said Tamara Stark, a forest expert with Greenpeace.
Unprecedented economic growth, coupled with a shortage of domestic forest resources, had seen China become the world's largest importer of tropical logs including merbau, the report said.
China also had the world's second-largest wood manufacturing sector after the US, it said.
The Greenpeace investigation showed Chinese importers used sophisticated methods such as forging import documents as prices of merbau soared to more than 600 dollars per cubic metre.
Source: Agence France-Presse
