The article describes the growing consensus that the "Swedish model" of forestry is failing to protect biodiversity, and old growth forests continue to be clear-cut, including those with FSC certification. With 10 million hectares certified, or 45% of its total forest, Sweden has one of the largest areas of FSC certified logging.

But certification has failed to protect valuable wildlife habitat. As part of his report, Hoffner interviewed Daniel Rutschman of Protect the Forest and Malin Sahlin of the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation (SSNC). In the short video below, they explain how FSC certified companies such as SCA get round FSC's requirements not to log key areas of old growth habitats: they simply sell those areas to someone else.

SCA accounts for over two million hectares of FSC certified area in Sweden, under a certificate (opens pdf, 500kb) issued by SGS - whose certificates are already being challenged in at least three other countries.

Hoffner's article ends with a quote from Lina Bergström of FSC Sweden: "I wish we could have more backbone" she says. "But big companies make mistakes. We are not a monitoring system, we are an improving system. It's a slow process, but we're getting there."

The truth is that FSC has been issuing certificates in Sweden for well over a decade. The country's tiny remaining fragments of old growth/high conservation value forest have continued to be trashed, including by FSC certified companies. If the FSC does not actually 'monitor' all this, then what exactly does it do? FSC is not supposed to be an 'improving' system, it is supposed to be a performance-based certification system.

Quite where Lina Bergström thinks FSC is "getting" is very open to question. All the evidence seems to suggest that, far from being an 'improving system', any improvements have now stalled and are going backwards. If the FSC proves to be too slow and too easily circumvented even in a relatively well-regulated country like Sweden, it bodes very poorly for the system in other more problematic parts of the world.

Photographs taken by Erik Hoffner showing the search for old growth characteristics in Sweden's forests are available here.

As a Greenpeace blog points out about SIFORCO, "villagers were fed up with the broken promises and seized some equipment from the company in order to get them to the negotiation table. In a mission of brutal retaliation, security forces came to the loggers' assistance, raped women and girls, beat people up and destroyed property."

People sold down the river. Image courtesy of Global Witness.

A statement (opens pdf, 728Kb) issued in late October by Jose Endundo, DRC's Minister for Environment, Nature Conservation and Tourism, concerning both the events related to SODEFOR in Oshwe in January 2010 and those in the village of Yalisika in May 2011 concerning SIFORCO, will do little to reassure those who have suffered atrocities at the hands of FSC-certified logging companies. But it does at least cast some more light on the disgraceful fraud that constitutes FSC's so-called Controlled Wood Policy, and the actions of FSC's certifiers.

Minister Endundo notes about the logging concessions that "resource rights within their boundaries are geographically ill-defined and, de facto, sometimes claimed by many different rights-holders" (1). This will come as no surprise to those who have been saying for years that the arbitrary issuing by the DRC government of logging concessions over vast areas of forest that are all under claims of traditional ownership and customary use by local communities is a powder-keg waiting to explode.

If the Minister's statement has any value, it is what it says about the conditions under which SGS could have issued SIFORCO, a subsidiary of the Swiss-based Danzer group, with an FSC Controlled Wood certificate in 2010. Under FSC's Controlled Wood rules, wood from origins with any of five characteristics must be avoided, including "Wood harvested in violation of traditional and civil rights" and "Wood harvested in forests in which High Conservation Values (areas particularly worth of protection) are threatened through management activities". In order to ensure that wood can be certified as Controlled Wood, FSC's accredited certifiers are supposed to conduct a risk assessment and, according to the FSC's rules, "The results of the company's risk assessment shall be made publicly available."

So what does SGS's Risk Assessment for the issuing of an FSC Controlled Wood certificate have to say about forest tenure in an around the SIFORCO concession? This remains a mystery because, if SGS has ever conducted such an assessment, it hasn't made it public. SGS has, however, produced a Public Summary report for the certification. The problem with this report, though, is that it is such an amateurish muddle that it is surprising that the FSC Secretariat didn't suspended SGS until it was corrected and made into something intelligible.

The problems with SIFORCO have now come to the attention of the international media, with Swiss TV broadcasting a piece which investigates the issues - available below, currently only with the original German narrative.

In early November, Greenpeace published a detailed briefing setting out its concerns with SIFORCO, and simultaneously submitted a formal complaint to FSC against the whole of the Danzer Group, which also includes the FSC certified IFO logging company operating in the Republic of Congo. Greenpeace has not made the complaint publicly available, but notes in its briefing that "To ensure that FSC's reputation in the international marketplace is maintained it is clear that the FSC must not only move swiftly to disassociate from Danzer, but also provide credible commitment that no further certification in the Congo Basin is supported until the necessary preconditions for enabling credible certification are met".

In response, FSC has issued a statement acknowledging that Greenpeace has filed a complaint under FSC's 'Policy of Association'. This procedure, which provides a mechanism for FSC to dissociate itself entirely from companies which might otherwise bring it into disrepute, has only been used on one previous occasion (in relation to the highly controversial APP company in Indonesia), and if successful could result in immediate cancellation of all Danzer certificates.

Danzer has also issued a statement in response to Greenpeace's briefing.

Whilst it is to be welcomed that SIFORCO and Danzer's certificates are being challanged, what should not be overlooked is that, what is at stake here is not really whether a particular logging company behaved in a totally unacceptable way or made mistakes - that is the least one would expect from most logging companies in the Congo Basin. The issue as far as forest certification and wider forest policy is concerned, is how such a company could have come to be certified in the first place?

The complaint against Danzer/SIFORCO is more than just another grievance against yet another certificate that should never have been issued. It is a warning that SGS's certification system as a whole simply cannot be trusted. Arguably, it is FSC's 'association' with SIFORCO's certifier, SGS, that most serves to undermine FSC's reputation, and it is from them that FSC should dissociate itself. Typically, though, and reflecting as ever the stranglehold that the certifiers have over the FSC's policies, the Policy of Association rules cannot be used to break the FSC's ties with any of its accredited certifiers, only with the companies they have erroneously certified. Until the FSC empowers itself to completely cut ties with certifiers whenever necessary, it will find itself constantly being associated with companies that bring it into disrepute.

The complaint against Danzer is also the latest signal that the FSC process is seriously ill-adapted to the conditions of the Congo Basin, and is probably unusable there. According to FSC-Watch's calculations, the complaint means that the area under FSC certification in the Congo Basin which has been cancelled, suspended or formally challenged is now greater than the certified area which is, as yet, formally uncontested. What is stake is whether the whole model of 'sustainable forest management' (i.e, industrial logging) in the Congo Basin is a failed paradigm, and something which the FSC should have nothing more to do with.

(1) In the original French, "des droits sur les ressources mal définis dans leurs limites géographique et, de facto, parfois revendiques par plusieurs ayants-droits différents"

In response to the concerns raised in the piece, IKEA told Plus-minus that "we are taking these charges seriously and investigating them in-depth with the help of external FSC certifiers". FSC-Watch is not quite sure what that means, given that the FSC appears to have given up any pretence of carrying out proper investigations of alleged breaches of the Principles and Criteria or other failings by the certifiers - and instead is asking the certifiers to investigate themselves. It will come as no surprise to regular FSC-Watch readers to know that Swedwood's clear-cutting of old-growth forest was certified by the Rainforest Alliance SmartWood. A person identified in the documentary as the certifier responsible for the Swedwood certificate declines to be interviewed.

The full piece, with English sub-titles specially prepared for FSC-Watch by Pro-Regenwald is here:

Taking us on a tour of some of the South African landscapes devastated by industrial plantations, the video explains how FSC's Principle 10 is inadequate to ensure that certified plantations are not responsible for destruction of non-forest ecosystem, such as grasslands, even if these are more biodiverse than local forests. It shows how these plantations are also in contravention of FSC Principles 5,6, 9 and 10.

Whilst the film concentrates on South Africa, what it documents also applies to many other certified plantations around the world. FSC's flawed policies on the certification of plantations, and its inability to ensure that its accredited certifiers are respecting the Principles and Criteria, are now causing active campaigning against the FSC system. FSC should realise that it's time for fundamental reform.

As we reported a week ago an investigation by Oxfam has revealed that the FSC-certified New Forests Company in Uganda has been responsible for eviction of 22,500 people from their land. In addition to the video news piece about Oxfam's report produced by the Guardian, Al Jazeera TV also reported on the evictions, including interviews with Kate Geary of Oxfam and Robert Devereux, the Chairman of New Forests Company.

In a response to the report, issued on October 24th, the FSC Secretariat has stated that "FSC takes the findings of the Oxfam report very seriously...FSC has filed an official complaint with SGS Qualifor in order to ensure that any allegations about contradictions with FSC's Principles and Criteria - particularly with regards to violent evictions and unresolved land claims - are investigated with the utmost rigor".

FSC asking SGS to investigate itself? That is the job of the Accreditation Services International (ASI), the former part of the FSC Secretariat that was spun out to become an independent organisation some years ago, and which has the responsiblity to independently verify that the certification companies accredited to the FSC (and other certification schemes, including the Marine Stewardship Council) are fulfilling the responsibilities and requirements set out for them by the FSC.

FSC-Watch wonders just what is going on here.

Perhaps the FSC no longer trusts the ASI to carry out proper assessments of whether the certifiers have broken the rules or not? It has good reason not to.

As we reported previously, ASI carried out an assessment of SGS's certification of New Forests Company in 2010, finding little wrong. ASI's report (opens pdf, 133Kb) noted that "The SGS Qualifor audit team conducted a professional and systematic surveillance audit. ASI audit team is satisfied that the CARs raised by SGS Qualifor during this audit address most of the nonconformity identified". The ASI accreditation inspection of SGS resulted in the issuing of only three minor technical 'Corrective Action Requests' against SGS, and one 'Observation'.

ASI failed to spot that SGS had failed to spot that NFC had evicted over 20,000 people from the land - despite the evictions having been the subject of a high court injunction

By issuing a 'complaint' against SGS (the wording of which has not been made public), FSC is basically admitting that ASI has not been doing its job properly. Because the FSC system as a whole relies on the certification companies to comply properly with the FSC's requirements, the failure of ASI means that the system as a whole has failed. FSC might as well have issued a complaint against itself.

It only goes to show what chaos the FSC system is now in, that it is powerless to do anything directly to uphold the certification standards that its accredited certifiers are supposed to operate to. Under any sensible certification system, if the accreditation body (i.e, in this case FSC) were to find fault with a certifier, then that certifier could be struck off the list of accredited certifiers (as SGS should have been long ago).

Or there is another explanation. Perhaps the FSC Secretariat realises that, whatever it might find (yet again) about how SGS's so-called certification system has failed all reasonable standards, nothing meaningful will result anyway, bearing in mind the stranglehold that the big certification companies have over the FSC. So FSC or ASI might as well save themselves the embarrassment of carrying out an investigation, finding fault and then doing nothing - and instead just let SGS carry out the investigation themselves, find nothing wrong and do nothing as a result.

This is much easier for all concerned, and means that everyone can quickly get back to the job of getting paid to issue certificates to companies that do not deserve them (and in some cases taking valuable 'gifts' from them at the same time), and pretending that all is well and good with the structure of the FSC system.

Organisations such as Oxfam, Greenpeace and even perhaps WWF will no doubt be wondering just how much worse things will get before they are forced to confront the fact that their membership of the FSC is helping to prop up an organisation that seems to have lost all control over its core purpose, and is now nothing but a constant embarrassment.

FSC's response? Nothing. Zip. Nada. Zilch. There is no mention of the company on FSC's website. It is not listed on FSC's list of current disputes.

Here's a short video produced by The Guardian and below that an article from REDD-Monitor about the certification. As mentioned in that article, the Oxfam report was widely reported. FSC's failure to respond publicly to this disgrace is inexplicable.

Ugandan farmers kicked off their land for New Forests Company’s carbon project
By Chris Lang, 23rd September 2011
A report released yesterday by Oxfam International documents how more than 22,000 people in Uganda were evicted to make way for a carbon offset tree plantation established by a London-based firm called New Forests Company. While this is not a REDD project, it provides an early warning of how "standards" and "safeguards" can be willfully ignored.
New Forests Company (NFC) was formed in 2004. The company now has projects covering a total of 90,000 hectares in Uganda, Tanzania, Mozambique and Rwanda. Investors in the company include the Agri-Vie Agribusiness Fund, which in turn is backed by the World Bank's private sector lending arm, the International Finance Corporation and the European Investment Bank. The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) owns about 20% of NFC and has a seat on its board. These investors have social and environmental standards to which NFC should comply.
Oxfam's report, "The New Forests Company and its Uganda Plantations", can be downloaded here (pdf file 208.7 KB). The story has been reported in The Guardian, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and on AlJazeera.
NFC has been certified under the Forest Stewardship Council since 2009 - despite the fact that less than two months after the certificate was awarded, more than 10,000 villagers petitioned Uganda's Lands Minister to stop NFC from evicting them from their land.
This is a company that, at least superficially, appears to be doing all the right things. Oxfam describes FSC as "the global gold standard for forestry best practice", yet Oxfam's report found that about 22,500 people were evicted to make way for NFC's plantations. None of them has received any compensation.
NFC denies that so many people were evicted and denies that company employees were involved in the evictions, instead blaming the Ugandan authorities for the evictions.
The problems are serious. Oxfam International's report, written by Kate Geary and Matt Grainger[1] states that,
"Today, the people evicted from the land are desperate, having been driven into poverty and landlessness. In some instances they say they were subjected to violence and their property, crops, and livestock destroyed. They say they were not properly consulted, have been offered no adequate compensation, and have received no alternative land."
NFC claims that people vacated the land "voluntarily and peacefully”. But one of the evicted people told Oxfam that,
"My land was taken by the New Forests Company. People from New Forests came with other security forces and started destroying crops and demolishing houses and they ordered us to leave. They beat people up, especially those who could not run. We ran in a group, my children, my grandchildren, my wife and me. It was such a painful time because the eviction was so forceful and violent."
NFC describes the people evicted as "encroachers" who were "illegally occupying land leased to an independent third party, NFC”. The government also describes them as "illegal encroachers”. The people evicted explained to Oxfam that they did have lawful entitlement to the land. Some of them had lived there for more than 40 years. Others were Second World War veterans and their descendants who were "allocated the land in recognition of service".
SGS, the company that carried out the assessment for the FSC certification (pdf file, 452.8 KB), states that the people's claims to the land are "highly dubious", which is, of course, exactly what NFC wants to hear. There is a conflict of interest at the heart of the FSC system, in that SGS audits are paid for by the company being audited, in this case SGS's assessment was paid for by NFC. When Oxfam spoke to lawyers representing the community members, they were told that the land dispute cases are still active.
Reading SGS's public summary of the assessment gives little clue of any problems. "[I]t is clear that the company has been successful in gaining the support of local communities," SGS writes, after interviewing 41 employees, contractors, health and education officials, local government officials and community members.
FSC has a process for making sure that its certifying bodies (such as SGS) are in fact checking that certified companies (such as NFC) comply to FSC's standards. A company called Accreditation Services International (ASI) carries out audits of the certifying body, including visits to certified operation. In 2010, ASI visited NFC's plantations as part of its audit of SGS Qualifor (pdf file, 133.2 KB). ASI found little to criticise: "The SGS Qualifor audit team conducted a professional and systematic surveillance audit."
None of the financiers involved managed to find anything wrong with NFC's operations:

*IFC reviewed NFC's plantation operations as part of its due diligence for its US$7 million equity investment in Agri-Vie, the private equity fund whose portfolio includes NFC. IFC decided that NFC had complied to its standard on resettlement "to the extent allowed by the Government".

*The European Investment Bank has invested US$12 million in Agri-Vie, US$5.65 million of which goes to NFC. EIB also has Environmental and Social Principles and Standards, which include a standard on involuntary resettlement. EIB found nothing wrong with NFC's operations in Uganda.

*HSBC has invested about US$10 million in NFC, an investment that was "subject to the company obtaining FSC certification for its operations”, according to SGS's assessment report. HSBC's judgement of whether NFC complies to its sustainability policies relies heavily on whether the company keeps its FSC certification.

Somehow, these investors have managed, with the help of FSC, SGS and ASI, to make 22,500 evicted people disappear completely.

Of course the people evicted have not disappeared. One of the people evicted to make way for NFC's carbon plantations told Oxfam, "I lost land. I'm landless. Land was my life. I have no rights. It's like I'm not a human being."

---

Full disclosure: I'm friends with the authors of the Oxfam report and have worked with both of them in the past.
Back to text ^^

Langer implies that the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), Greenpeace, and the Forest Stewardship Council have all played their part in the predicament of Gibson, which is now potentially facing criminal prosecution for use of illegally traded wood. They are all lumped together as environmentalists with whom Gibson has 'lain down' and then gotten up with fleas. Curiously, Langer neglects to mention the 'environmental' group which has been closest to Gibson, and has provided it, at significant cost, with 'advice' and FSC certificates: the Rainforest Alliance.

Most US environmentalists will no doubt dismiss this as yet more right-wing ranting, of which there has been much around the Gibson case, most of it aimed at "over-reach" of the Obama administration. But Langer has a point, even if he misses the mark somewhat. And now the case has become the subject of a petition to President Obama, which more than 23,000 people had signed by today, defending Gibson and attacking the Lacey Act. In this, Gibson's CEO Henry Juszkiewicz is quoted as saying "Gibson has a long history of supporting sustainable and responsible sources of wood and has worked diligently with entities such as the Rainforest Alliance and Greenpeace to secure FSC-certified supplies. The wood seized on August 24 satisfied FSC standards."

The Rainforest Alliance itself, though, is keeping quiet. The Alliance has issued no formal public statement answering questions that have been raised about the nature of its relationship with Gibson, or on the quality of the service it provided to the company. The Alliance's 'Frog Blog' from September 30th tells a little story about one of its staff member's incorruptibility: "In the late 1970's, the Rainforest Alliance's senior vice president of programs, Mohammad Rafiq...was a young forest officer in rural Pakistan...when he was offered lucrative bribes to look the other way when trucks carrying illegally harvested wood passed his checkpoint. When he refused those bribes, the traffickers did everything in their power to get him out of the way." Perhaps we are meant to feel assured by this that the Alliance's taking of 'gifts' worth up to $390,000 per year from from Gibson, which it was supposedly independently certifying, could not possibly be anything to do with corruption.

Perhaps the Rainforest Alliance looks so much like a good ol' American business that it must, in Langer's view, be beyond reproach. But equally curious as Langer's omission of any mention of the Rainforest Alliance is that whilst the EIA, Greenpeace and the FSC are taking the rap for Gibson's bad case of fleas, they too are keeping silent about the real source of the infestation.

EIA is no doubt in a bind because the Rainforest Alliance was one of its partners in the lobby coalition that secured the enactment of the Lacey Act in 2008.

The FSC is, as ever, confronted with the horrible dilemma that it either kicks out the Rainforest Alliance, and thereby loses the maybe 40% of its certificates that the Alliance's SmartWood programme is responsible for issuing, or does nothing and becomes forever known as being completely impotent at upholding certifier standards of propriety. It has anyway tied itself up in contractual knots which make it almost impossible to apply any serious sanctions against miscreant certifiers without finding itself in court.

Greenpeace has once again found that one of the wheels of its global forest campaign appears to have fallen off, because so much of what it campaigns for ultimately relies on there being a functioning and credible FSC to attest that its targeted forest wreckers and criminals have been embarrassed into becoming reformed, certified, 'sustainable forest managers'. Clearly, it is going to struggle to convince supporters of the effectiveness of this strategy if the FSC itself is shown to be unable to uphold forest certification standards.

Greenpeace, along with other genuine environmental groups, has long sought to build credibility and respect amongst the business community. They and EIA had very little to do with Gibson's unfortunate choice of suppliers, or its FSC certificates, they made no money out of 'advising' Gibson, nor took any valuable gifts from it. Yet they now find themselves being likened to flea-spreading curs.

Greenpeace and EIA may only be able to save the political credibility of the Lacey Act if they are open and honest about what has gone so badly wrong in the Gibson case, and who was responsible. They are rightly concerned about being seen to engage in 'green-on-green' disagreements. But like most people, they have been suckered in by the Rainforest Alliance's plausible 'not-for-profit' rhetoric, and they have for too long been publicly silent on the deep structural problems and flawed policies within the FSC, which allow for these kinds of problems to re-occur. In order to retain any credibility for the FSC, they need to insist on the abandoning of the so-called 'Controlled Wood' Policy. More urgently, they need to insist that the Rainforest Alliance is removed as an accredited certifier. Until they do, they will no doubt continue to be seen by some as bedding down with flea-ridden dogs.

The August raid was the second time USFW had moved in on Gibson, with company materials having been removed in a raid in 2009 - though no prosecutions have yet been brought as a result. But whatever the final outcome of USFW's new investigations into possible importation by Gibson of illegally traded timber, one of the underlying problems seems to have been the company's reliance on FSC certification. According to Gibson "The wood the Government seized on August 24 is from a Forest Stewardship Council certified supplier and is FSC Controlled, meaning that the wood complies with the standards of the Forest Stewardship Council...FSC Controlled Wood standards require, among other things, that the wood not be illegally harvested and not be harvested in violation of traditional and civil rights". But as this website has been pointing out for five years, the problem with FSC 'Controlled Wood' is precisely that it is not actually subject to any independently controlled checks or verification.

The FSC's "requirement" that Controlled Wood is not from an illegal or otherwise unacceptable source is only enforced insofar as certifiers are asked to carry out a 'risk assessment' of the possibility of illegally-sourced wood entering a supply chain which carries other, fully certified wood. Some of the Controlled Wood risk assessments seen by FSC-Watch are laughable in their superficiality, lack of expert knowledge of local circumstances, and do not even draw on published information about specific evidence of illegalities or land conflicts. They are vulnerable to highly subjective assessments of what is a high, medium or low risk. They are, to all intents and purposes, useless as a means of guaranteeing legality of specific parcels of wood or specific supply chains.

Moreover, FSC-Watch has repeatedly questioned the reliability of the Rainforest Alliance, which was responsible for the Controlled Wood certificates on which Gibson depended, in assessing for illegal activities. We warned three years ago that US timber buyers and users should be wary of relying on any FSC certification to ensure compliance with the Lacey Act, bearing in mind the ever-growing list of documented cases of FSC certified wood later proving to be from illegal sources.

But as well as these underlying problems, the Gibson Guitars fiasco has also revealed new information about the relationship between the company and the Rainforest Alliance. The first raid on Gibson in 2009 brought to wider public attention that Gibson's Chairman and CEO, Henry Juszkiewicz, was also a member of the Board of the Rainforest Alliance. Shortly after the raid, the Alliance announced that Juszkiewicz would take "leave of absence" from its board until the USFW investigations had been completed - though it did not address whether it had been appropriate in the first place for the CEO of one of the companies it 'independently' certifies to also be on its own Board of Directors.

The Tennessean article now reveals that, from 2006 onwards, Rainforest Alliance also accepted a number of 'gifts' in cash and donations of expensive guitars from Gibson - estimated to have been worth between $315,000 and $390,000 each year. The Alliance has said that it will now stop accepting some such gifts, and the article reports it's vice-President, Richard Donovan, as saying that its FSC certification business (SmartWood) is 'insulated' from undue influence from donations to the organisation in general. However it is surprising that the Alliance appears not to have considered that the perception of a potential conflict of interest could undermine the credibility of both it's own certification system and of the FSC system more generally. Financial figures given in the the Alliance's 2010 Annual Report (opens pdf, 2.5MB) indicate that the reported value of Gibson's 'gifts' to the Alliance would have represented almost its entire annual operating surplus.

As well as the questionable practice of accepting valuable gifts from companies it was supposedly independently certifying, the story published in the Tennessean also reveals that Rainforest Alliance has been paid by Gibson to provide 'guidance' on its sourcing of timber. According to the article, the Alliance had received $150,000 in 2011 in "expenses related to guidance on sustainable sourcing of wood". In other words, the Alliance has been providing consultancy services to Gibson, as well simultaneously certifying the company. Credible certification schemes prohibit the simultaneous provision of consultancy services with 'independent' certification of the same company, as this can represent a serious conflict of interest.

In the article below, Donovan explains that the Alliance has asked Gibson to take "major corrective action" to retain its FSC accreditation after what he called misstatements by Gibson CEO Juszkiewicz that exaggerated the level of FSC oversight of the wood confiscated in the August raid. Gibson might well be wondering how it comes to be that, with all the gifts, the certification fees, and the consultancy fees paid to the Alliance, as well as a place on the Alliance's Board, it still appears to have misunderstood the nature of the 'oversight' which the Alliance's FSC certificates provided to them. Other companies paying for the Alliance's certificates or advice will no doubt be asking themselves similar questions about the reliability and quality of the service they are receiving.

The case has become a cause celebre, with the company itself and Republican politicians claiming that the raids represent a serious case of "over-reach" of government. But amidst the political mud-slinging, the main lessons for anyone interested in the future of the world's forests, and specifically for independent wood certification, should not be lost.

The FSC International Secretariat has been informed of the latest revelations concerning the relationship between Rainforest Alliance and Gibson Guitars. It would seem to have little choice but to immediately suspend Rainforest Alliance Smartwood's accreditation as an FSC certifier, subject to further investigations. Anything less than this will send a signal that the FSC is incapable of sanctioning even the most egregiously inappropriate behaviour by the certification bodies which it is supposed to regulate. It is not known whether the Rainforest Alliance has taken gifts from other companies that it certifies. The FSC will have to assess whether it's own reputation would be tarnished by any continuing association with Rainforest Alliance Smartwood.

The FSC Secretariat will also have to move quickly to reduce the damage which this affair does to the FSC's credibility, especially amongst the US wood trade. A first step would be to immediately cancel the Controlled Wood policy - which would at least reduce the risk that many more USFW raids on FSC certified companies could follow.

For guitar makers, prized woods pose quandary Gibson case pits rich sounds against ecological concerns

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Two weeks ago, Gibson Guitar abruptly canceled plans for what was to have been a major business announcement: the launch of a partnership with Fiji to become the island nation's exclusive buyer of mahogany to make the Nashville company's high-end guitars.

Gibson CEO Henry Juszkiewicz and his supplier had worked for months to pull off the deal, giving a $5,000 guitar to Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama last summer as a gesture of good will.

But the Fijian leader's trip to Nashville didn't materialize, the announcement was canceled and a hurried explanation from Gibson said the negotiations were continuing.

The on-again, off-again deal between Gibson and Bainimarama -- a military strongman who has taken control of many of the island's resources and denied free elections since a 2006 coup, according to human rights groups -- illustrates the uncertainties facing guitar makers such as Gibson.

With worldwide rain-forest acreage dwindling, stronger U.S. and international environmental laws, and consumers snubbing new guitar models made from alternative materials, Gibson and other guitar makers have had to hopscotch the globe in search of new sources for rare tonewoods -- mahogany, rosewood and ebony harvested from 200- and 300-year-old trees -- to deliver the rich sounds musicians treasure.

"A musician can hear the difference when he's playing guitar made from certain woods," Juszkiewicz said. "These are the materials our customers value and expect."

For its efforts, Gibson has run afoul of both environmentalists and federal law enforcement officials. A federal probe continues into whether Gibson has violated environmental laws in its wood import practices, after two separate raids on the company: one on Aug. 24 and one in fall 2009.

The legal cases -- which have spilled over into a conservative cause celebre -- have pitted Tennessee congressional leaders, musicians and others who say the government raids put American jobs at risk versus environmentalists concerned about the sustainability of the world's rain forests.

The case has also served to cast a spotlight on Gibson's financial relationship with the international watchdog group that accredits its wood supplies as legitimate to ship after they're harvested.

The group -- the Rainforest Alliance -- has consistently given Gibson high marks for environmental practices in the form of the widely recognized Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) stamp of approval for its wood imports.

The FSC serves as a sort of Good Housekeeping stamp of approval, issued to companies and forest managers that are found to meet a set of forest management standards. Absent any formal national and international legal standards, the FSC stamp is widely regarded as among the best independent assessments of a company's environmental practices.

Less widely known is Gibson's longtime practice of making large contributions to the alliance.

While the Rainforest Alliance has regularly investigated and audited Gibson, it also has been among the biggest recipients of the Gibson company's charitable efforts, receiving between $315,000 and $390,000 each year since 2006 in cash and donations of expensive guitars for the charity's annual gala dinner, according to a Tennessean review of tax records.

The agency also charges Gibson and other companies annual stewardship council fees between $2,500 and $7,500, according to Richard Donovan, the group's vice president.

Alliance leaders say there's no conflict of interest. The alliance is careful to keep its FSC investigations and review of wood shipments separate from the rest of the organization's environmental work and safe from undue influence, Donovan said.

"One of the things we have done very carefully with all our auditing policies is making sure there are walls between (FSC) auditors and any other Rainforest Alliance offices," he said.

The Rainforest Alliance has nevertheless decided to stop accepting donations from Gibson toward its annual gala fundraising event pending the outcome of the federal probe, Donovan said. Those have amounted to $50,000 this year, according to figures supplied by the organization.

The group will continue to accept other contributions for activities in developing countries ($170,000 in 2011) and for "expenses related to guidance on sustainable sourcing of wood," which has amounted to $150,000 thus far this year, Donovan said.

Still, Donovan said that in recent weeks the Rainforest Alliance has asked Gibson to take "major corrective action" to retain its FSC accreditation after what he called misstatements by CEO Juszkiewicz that exaggerated the level of FSC oversight of the wood confiscated in the August raid.

Meanwhile, other environmental groups continue to criticize Juszkiewicz as unjustly inflaming public opinion against legislation known as the Lacey Act, which bans imports of illegally logged woods. Gibson is being investigated for possibly violating this act.

"This has been politicized in an irrational way, in an almost surreal way, and been twisted into a message around jobs," said Andrea Johnson, forest campaign director for the nonprofit Environmental Investigation Agency.

Johnson's group has publicly pushed back against Juszkiewicz, a near-constant presence on conservative talk and TV shows since federal authorities raided the guitar manufacturers facilities on Aug. 24, seizing wood, guitars, computer hard drives and documents.

It wasn't always this way. At one time environmentalists and guitar makers had forged an alliance that environmentalists called a model for responsible companies in the timber business.

Why wood matters

Guitar enthusiasts swear they can hear a difference in the quality and timbre of music from a guitar whose neck is made from Honduran ebony versus rosewood harvested in Madagascar.

Centuries of instrument-making traditions have led to certain wood source norms for the most valuable guitars. For example, Sitka spruce is best suited as a guitar top, says Joe Glaser, a Nashville-based luthier.

Mahogany and ebony are often the woods of choice for guitar backs.

For the fingerboard -- the overlay of the guitar neck where fingers press strings for notes -- players have come to expect ebony, an extremely dense wood that doesn't wear from constant finger pressure.

But sources of such woods are increasingly tough to find.

By 2006, when environmental groups including Greenpeace made their first overtures to major U.S. guitar makers, traditional sources of some of those woods had already begun to dry up.

Brazilian rosewood, valued for sides, had been placed on an endangered species list and was illegal to import.

Adirondack Sitka trees had been all but logged to extinction to supply makers of Adirondack-style furniture. The Canadian government was closing British Columbia's Sitka forests to loggers. And environmentalists were looking at data that suggested the rate of Sitka spruce logging in the Alaskan panhandle would decimate the forests and timber supplies if not responsibly managed.

When Greenpeace approached the nation's largest guitar makers with an invitation for a trip to Alaska to meet with Native American logging interests, most accepted. In addition to Gibson, the activist group invited the U.S.'s other longtime guitar manufacturers -- Fender, Taylor and Martin.

Confronted with clear-cut forests and data on depletion rates, the guitar executives appeared alarmed by what they saw, said Scott Paul, Greenpeace director of forest projects.

The episode created the beginnings of a working coalition among environmentalists and music instrument makers to ensure long-term supplies of old-growth forests to satisfy both industry interests and environmental ones.

In fact, the cooperative model was considered so successful that two years later a Switzerland-based international group -- concerned about illegal logging in Africa -- organized a fact-finding trip to Madagascar, an island nation off the coast of southern Africa.

The Tropical Forest Trust (TFT) took representatives from the same guitar companies (Fender was absent this time) on a two-week trip.

Madagascar was a mecca for tonewoods, with old-growth rosewood and ebony scattered in forests across the country.

It was also a place of critical concern to environmentalists. It is one of the most biodiverse places on Earth, with numerous unique species that exist nowhere else on the planet.

Guitar makers were taken on drive-bys past illegal logging operations inside what should have been protected national forests. They also were exposed to the lives of poverty of island people who had seen little benefit from illegal logging, according to TFT executive Scott Poynton.

Shortly after the trip, a military coup in Madagascar further soured some guitar makers on doing business there.

C.F. Martin Guitars CEO Chris Martin said his company immediately halted imports of wood from Madagascar.

Taylor Guitars CEO Bob Taylor said his company had never imported wood from Madagascar and decided not to start.

What he saw was "ravaged land and a tangle of national laws that made it impossible to figure out what was legal and illegal to export, even though it appeared that people were desperate to have us there," Taylor said.

Gibson Guitars, however, continued to import from the country, according to the federal case against the company.

Then, in November 2009, a year after the Madagascar trip, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agents raided Gibson's factories in Nashville, confiscating pallets of Madagascan ebony on suspicion that Gibson had violated the Lacey Act.

In federal court filings since the seizure, U.S. attorneys have submitted emails from Gibson staffer Gene Nix, who went on the TFT trip, as evidence the company knew the wood had been illegally extracted.

"The true Ebony species preferred by Gibson Musical Instruments is found only in Madagascar," Nix had written soon after his trip.

"This is a slow-growing tree species with very little conservation protection and supplies are considered to be highly threatened in its native environment due to over exploitation. ... All legal timber and wood exports are PROHIBITED because of widespread corruption and theft of valuable woods like rosewood and ebony," the email said.

But, Nix wrote, a Chinese wood dealer living in Madagascar, Roger Thunam, might be able to help supply wood for the "grey market," a phrase that federal investigators said in court records means the material was contraband.

"Mr. Thunam on the other hand should now be able to supply Nagel (Gibson's German middleman) with all the rosewood and ebony for the grey market," Nix said.

Thunam has been singled out in separate investigative reports by National Geographic magazine and by international groups Global Witness and the Environmental Investigation Agency as engaging in questionable logging practices. According to the U.S. case against Gibson, Thunam's business dealt "almost exclusively in sawn wood or logs which at least as of 2006 were illegal to export from Madagascar."

Gibson denies any wrongdoing, and its attorneys say the Nix emails are being taken out of context. No criminal charges have been filed as a result of the 2009 raid or in the August case.

'We all bear responsibility'

While Gibson remains under federal scrutiny -- it's the only American guitar maker currently the subject of Lacey Act probes -- the quest for the best-sounding woods continues.

Bob Taylor of Taylor Guitars said his company hopes to be able to announce a new sustainable foresting project in Africa in short order, but he could offer no new details last week.

There may be more news on the Fiji deal soon, Gibson spokesman Ed James said.

The challenge for American guitar makers, Taylor said, lies in the fact that the the most valuable species for guitars often grow in the most politically unstable places, leaving companies little option but to make the best deals they can.

"We're not environmentalists, or lawmakers or policy people or forestry experts," Taylor said. "We're just guitar makers who now have to be more involved in our sources."

Meanwhile, musicians continue to value high-end guitars made from imported hardwoods.

British singer James Blunt said he believes those guitars can still be made without cost to the environment. He posted a clip on the Gibson Guitar UK Facebook page in support of the company, saying, "Not only do they make beautiful guitars, but on an environmental level, they do so with sustainable woods certified by the Forest Stewardship Council."

Some environmentalists say they are sympathetic to the guitar makers' challenges as they search for woods that musicians demand.

"While everyone might be pointing the finger at Gibson as the dodgy guys, the question is why is everyone buying this stuff?" said Poynton of the Tropical Forest Trust. "We all bear responsibility. Musicians bear responsibility."

The August raid was the second time USFW had moved in on Gibson, with company materials having been removed in a raid in 2009 - though no prosecutions have yet been brought as a result. But whatever the final outcome of USFW's new investigations into possible importation by Gibson of illegally traded timber, one of the underlying problems seems to have been the company's reliance on FSC certification. According to Gibson "The wood the Government seized on August 24 is from a Forest Stewardship Council certified supplier and is FSC Controlled, meaning that the wood complies with the standards of the Forest Stewardship Council...FSC Controlled Wood standards require, among other things, that the wood not be illegally harvested and not be harvested in violation of traditional and civil rights". But as this website has been pointing out for five years, the problem with FSC 'Controlled Wood' is precisely that it is not actually subject to any independently controlled checks or verification.

The FSC's "requirement" that Controlled Wood is not from an illegal or otherwise unacceptable source is only enforced insofar as certifiers are asked to carry out a 'risk assessment' of the possibility of illegally-sourced wood entering a supply chain which carries other, fully certified wood. Some of the Controlled Wood risk assessments seen by FSC-Watch are laughable in their superficiality, lack of expert knowledge of local circumstances, and do not even draw on published information about specific evidence of illegalities or land conflicts. They are vulnerable to highly subjective assessments of what is a high, medium or low risk. They are, to all intents and purposes, useless as a means of guaranteeing legality of specific parcels of wood or specific supply chains.

Moreover, FSC-Watch has repeatedly questioned the reliability of the Rainforest Alliance, which was responsible for the Controlled Wood certificates on which Gibson depended, in assessing for illegal activities. We warned three years ago that US timber buyers and users should be wary of relying on any FSC certification to ensure compliance with the Lacey Act, bearing in mind the ever-growing list of documented cases of FSC certified wood later proving to be from illegal sources.

But as well as these underlying problems, the Gibson Guitars fiasco has also revealed new information about the relationship between the company and the Rainforest Alliance. The first raid on Gibson in 2009 brought to wider public attention that Gibson's Chairman and CEO, Henry Juszkiewicz, was also a member of the Board of the Rainforest Alliance. Shortly after the raid, the Alliance announced that Juszkiewicz would take "leave of absence" from its board until the USFW investigations had been completed - though it did not address whether it had been appropriate in the first place for the CEO of one of the companies it 'independently' certifies to also be on its own Board of Directors.

The Tennessean article now reveals that, from 2006 onwards, Rainforest Alliance also accepted a number of 'gifts' in cash and donations of expensive guitars from Gibson - estimated to have been worth between $315,000 and $390,000 each year. The Alliance has said that it will now stop accepting some such gifts, and the article reports it's vice-President, Richard Donovan, as saying that its FSC certification business (SmartWood) is 'insulated' from undue influence from donations to the organisation in general. However it is surprising that the Alliance appears not to have considered that the perception of a potential conflict of interest could undermine the credibility of both it's own certification system and of the FSC system more generally. Financial figures given in the the Alliance's 2010 Annual Report (opens pdf, 2.5MB) indicate that the reported value of Gibson's 'gifts' to the Alliance would have represented almost its entire annual operating surplus.

As well as the questionable practice of accepting valuable gifts from companies it was supposedly independently certifying, the story published in the Tennessean also reveals that Rainforest Alliance has been paid by Gibson to provide 'guidance' on its sourcing of timber. According to the article, the Alliance had received $150,000 in 2011 in "expenses related to guidance on sustainable sourcing of wood". In other words, the Alliance has been providing consultancy services to Gibson, as well simultaneously certifying the company. Credible certification schemes prohibit the simultaneous provision of consultancy services with 'independent' certification of the same company, as this can represent a serious conflict of interest.

In the article below, Donovan explains that the Alliance has asked Gibson to take "major corrective action" to retain its FSC accreditation after what he called misstatements by Gibson CEO Juszkiewicz that exaggerated the level of FSC oversight of the wood confiscated in the August raid. Gibson might well be wondering how it comes to be that, with all the gifts, the certification fees, and the consultancy fees paid to the Alliance, as well as a place on the Alliance's Board, it still appears to have misunderstood the nature of the 'oversight' which the Alliance's FSC certificates provided to them. Other companies paying for the Alliance's certificates or advice will no doubt be asking themselves similar questions about the reliability and quality of the service they are receiving.

The case has become a cause celebre, with the company itself and Republican politicians claiming that the raids represent a serious case of "over-reach" of government. But amidst the political mud-slinging, the main lessons for anyone interested in the future of the world's forests, and specifically for independent wood certification, should not be lost.

The FSC International Secretariat has been informed of the latest revelations concerning the relationship between Rainforest Alliance and Gibson Guitars. It would seem to have little choice but to immediately suspend Rainforest Alliance Smartwood's accreditation as an FSC certifier, subject to further investigations. Anything less than this will send a signal that the FSC is incapable of sanctioning even the most egregiously inappropriate behaviour by the certification bodies which it is supposed to regulate. It is not known whether the Rainforest Alliance has taken gifts from other companies that it certifies. The FSC will have to assess whether it's own reputation would be tarnished by any continuing association with Rainforest Alliance Smartwood.

The FSC Secretariat will also have to move quickly to reduce the damage which this affair does to the FSC's credibility, especially amongst the US wood trade. A first step would be to immediately cancel the Controlled Wood policy - which would at least reduce the risk that many more USFW raids on FSC certified companies could follow.

For guitar makers, prized woods pose quandary Gibson case pits rich sounds against ecological concerns

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Two weeks ago, Gibson Guitar abruptly canceled plans for what was to have been a major business announcement: the launch of a partnership with Fiji to become the island nation's exclusive buyer of mahogany to make the Nashville company's high-end guitars.

Gibson CEO Henry Juszkiewicz and his supplier had worked for months to pull off the deal, giving a $5,000 guitar to Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama last summer as a gesture of good will.

But the Fijian leader's trip to Nashville didn't materialize, the announcement was canceled and a hurried explanation from Gibson said the negotiations were continuing.

The on-again, off-again deal between Gibson and Bainimarama -- a military strongman who has taken control of many of the island's resources and denied free elections since a 2006 coup, according to human rights groups -- illustrates the uncertainties facing guitar makers such as Gibson.

With worldwide rain-forest acreage dwindling, stronger U.S. and international environmental laws, and consumers snubbing new guitar models made from alternative materials, Gibson and other guitar makers have had to hopscotch the globe in search of new sources for rare tonewoods -- mahogany, rosewood and ebony harvested from 200- and 300-year-old trees -- to deliver the rich sounds musicians treasure.

"A musician can hear the difference when he's playing guitar made from certain woods," Juszkiewicz said. "These are the materials our customers value and expect."

For its efforts, Gibson has run afoul of both environmentalists and federal law enforcement officials. A federal probe continues into whether Gibson has violated environmental laws in its wood import practices, after two separate raids on the company: one on Aug. 24 and one in fall 2009.

The legal cases -- which have spilled over into a conservative cause celebre -- have pitted Tennessee congressional leaders, musicians and others who say the government raids put American jobs at risk versus environmentalists concerned about the sustainability of the world's rain forests.

The case has also served to cast a spotlight on Gibson's financial relationship with the international watchdog group that accredits its wood supplies as legitimate to ship after they're harvested.

The group -- the Rainforest Alliance -- has consistently given Gibson high marks for environmental practices in the form of the widely recognized Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) stamp of approval for its wood imports.

The FSC serves as a sort of Good Housekeeping stamp of approval, issued to companies and forest managers that are found to meet a set of forest management standards. Absent any formal national and international legal standards, the FSC stamp is widely regarded as among the best independent assessments of a company's environmental practices.

Less widely known is Gibson's longtime practice of making large contributions to the alliance.

While the Rainforest Alliance has regularly investigated and audited Gibson, it also has been among the biggest recipients of the Gibson company's charitable efforts, receiving between $315,000 and $390,000 each year since 2006 in cash and donations of expensive guitars for the charity's annual gala dinner, according to a Tennessean review of tax records.

The agency also charges Gibson and other companies annual stewardship council fees between $2,500 and $7,500, according to Richard Donovan, the group's vice president.

Alliance leaders say there's no conflict of interest. The alliance is careful to keep its FSC investigations and review of wood shipments separate from the rest of the organization's environmental work and safe from undue influence, Donovan said.

"One of the things we have done very carefully with all our auditing policies is making sure there are walls between (FSC) auditors and any other Rainforest Alliance offices," he said.

The Rainforest Alliance has nevertheless decided to stop accepting donations from Gibson toward its annual gala fundraising event pending the outcome of the federal probe, Donovan said. Those have amounted to $50,000 this year, according to figures supplied by the organization.

The group will continue to accept other contributions for activities in developing countries ($170,000 in 2011) and for "expenses related to guidance on sustainable sourcing of wood," which has amounted to $150,000 thus far this year, Donovan said.

Still, Donovan said that in recent weeks the Rainforest Alliance has asked Gibson to take "major corrective action" to retain its FSC accreditation after what he called misstatements by CEO Juszkiewicz that exaggerated the level of FSC oversight of the wood confiscated in the August raid.

Meanwhile, other environmental groups continue to criticize Juszkiewicz as unjustly inflaming public opinion against legislation known as the Lacey Act, which bans imports of illegally logged woods. Gibson is being investigated for possibly violating this act.

"This has been politicized in an irrational way, in an almost surreal way, and been twisted into a message around jobs," said Andrea Johnson, forest campaign director for the nonprofit Environmental Investigation Agency.

Johnson's group has publicly pushed back against Juszkiewicz, a near-constant presence on conservative talk and TV shows since federal authorities raided the guitar manufacturers facilities on Aug. 24, seizing wood, guitars, computer hard drives and documents.

It wasn't always this way. At one time environmentalists and guitar makers had forged an alliance that environmentalists called a model for responsible companies in the timber business.

Why wood matters

Guitar enthusiasts swear they can hear a difference in the quality and timbre of music from a guitar whose neck is made from Honduran ebony versus rosewood harvested in Madagascar.

Centuries of instrument-making traditions have led to certain wood source norms for the most valuable guitars. For example, Sitka spruce is best suited as a guitar top, says Joe Glaser, a Nashville-based luthier.

Mahogany and ebony are often the woods of choice for guitar backs.

For the fingerboard -- the overlay of the guitar neck where fingers press strings for notes -- players have come to expect ebony, an extremely dense wood that doesn't wear from constant finger pressure.

But sources of such woods are increasingly tough to find.

By 2006, when environmental groups including Greenpeace made their first overtures to major U.S. guitar makers, traditional sources of some of those woods had already begun to dry up.

Brazilian rosewood, valued for sides, had been placed on an endangered species list and was illegal to import.

Adirondack Sitka trees had been all but logged to extinction to supply makers of Adirondack-style furniture. The Canadian government was closing British Columbia's Sitka forests to loggers. And environmentalists were looking at data that suggested the rate of Sitka spruce logging in the Alaskan panhandle would decimate the forests and timber supplies if not responsibly managed.

When Greenpeace approached the nation's largest guitar makers with an invitation for a trip to Alaska to meet with Native American logging interests, most accepted. In addition to Gibson, the activist group invited the U.S.'s other longtime guitar manufacturers -- Fender, Taylor and Martin.

Confronted with clear-cut forests and data on depletion rates, the guitar executives appeared alarmed by what they saw, said Scott Paul, Greenpeace director of forest projects.

The episode created the beginnings of a working coalition among environmentalists and music instrument makers to ensure long-term supplies of old-growth forests to satisfy both industry interests and environmental ones.

In fact, the cooperative model was considered so successful that two years later a Switzerland-based international group -- concerned about illegal logging in Africa -- organized a fact-finding trip to Madagascar, an island nation off the coast of southern Africa.

The Tropical Forest Trust (TFT) took representatives from the same guitar companies (Fender was absent this time) on a two-week trip.

Madagascar was a mecca for tonewoods, with old-growth rosewood and ebony scattered in forests across the country.

It was also a place of critical concern to environmentalists. It is one of the most biodiverse places on Earth, with numerous unique species that exist nowhere else on the planet.

Guitar makers were taken on drive-bys past illegal logging operations inside what should have been protected national forests. They also were exposed to the lives of poverty of island people who had seen little benefit from illegal logging, according to TFT executive Scott Poynton.

Shortly after the trip, a military coup in Madagascar further soured some guitar makers on doing business there.

C.F. Martin Guitars CEO Chris Martin said his company immediately halted imports of wood from Madagascar.

Taylor Guitars CEO Bob Taylor said his company had never imported wood from Madagascar and decided not to start.

What he saw was "ravaged land and a tangle of national laws that made it impossible to figure out what was legal and illegal to export, even though it appeared that people were desperate to have us there," Taylor said.

Gibson Guitars, however, continued to import from the country, according to the federal case against the company.

Then, in November 2009, a year after the Madagascar trip, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agents raided Gibson's factories in Nashville, confiscating pallets of Madagascan ebony on suspicion that Gibson had violated the Lacey Act.

In federal court filings since the seizure, U.S. attorneys have submitted emails from Gibson staffer Gene Nix, who went on the TFT trip, as evidence the company knew the wood had been illegally extracted.

"The true Ebony species preferred by Gibson Musical Instruments is found only in Madagascar," Nix had written soon after his trip.

"This is a slow-growing tree species with very little conservation protection and supplies are considered to be highly threatened in its native environment due to over exploitation. ... All legal timber and wood exports are PROHIBITED because of widespread corruption and theft of valuable woods like rosewood and ebony," the email said.

But, Nix wrote, a Chinese wood dealer living in Madagascar, Roger Thunam, might be able to help supply wood for the "grey market," a phrase that federal investigators said in court records means the material was contraband.

"Mr. Thunam on the other hand should now be able to supply Nagel (Gibson's German middleman) with all the rosewood and ebony for the grey market," Nix said.

Thunam has been singled out in separate investigative reports by National Geographic magazine and by international groups Global Witness and the Environmental Investigation Agency as engaging in questionable logging practices. According to the U.S. case against Gibson, Thunam's business dealt "almost exclusively in sawn wood or logs which at least as of 2006 were illegal to export from Madagascar."

Gibson denies any wrongdoing, and its attorneys say the Nix emails are being taken out of context. No criminal charges have been filed as a result of the 2009 raid or in the August case.

'We all bear responsibility'

While Gibson remains under federal scrutiny -- it's the only American guitar maker currently the subject of Lacey Act probes -- the quest for the best-sounding woods continues.

Bob Taylor of Taylor Guitars said his company hopes to be able to announce a new sustainable foresting project in Africa in short order, but he could offer no new details last week.

There may be more news on the Fiji deal soon, Gibson spokesman Ed James said.

The challenge for American guitar makers, Taylor said, lies in the fact that the the most valuable species for guitars often grow in the most politically unstable places, leaving companies little option but to make the best deals they can.

"We're not environmentalists, or lawmakers or policy people or forestry experts," Taylor said. "We're just guitar makers who now have to be more involved in our sources."

Meanwhile, musicians continue to value high-end guitars made from imported hardwoods.

British singer James Blunt said he believes those guitars can still be made without cost to the environment. He posted a clip on the Gibson Guitar UK Facebook page in support of the company, saying, "Not only do they make beautiful guitars, but on an environmental level, they do so with sustainable woods certified by the Forest Stewardship Council."

Some environmentalists say they are sympathetic to the guitar makers' challenges as they search for woods that musicians demand.

"While everyone might be pointing the finger at Gibson as the dodgy guys, the question is why is everyone buying this stuff?" said Poynton of the Tropical Forest Trust. "We all bear responsibility. Musicians bear responsibility."