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No sandalwood in Guyana
Dear Editor,
On 17 June you reproduced (‘Forestry exports earnings down by US$2M’) from the fortnightly Tropical Timber Market Report 16-11 (1-15 June 2011) of the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO), the latest trade data submitted by the Guyana Forestry Commission (GFC).
Readers should be aware that ITTO simply reproduces what the GFC sends in, there is no independent verification. This report contains the statement ‘Export prices for sandalwood and splitwood also fell during the first quarter of this year’. Sandalwood? The Plants of Guyana spreadsheet on the GFC website does not list sandalwood.
A. M. Polak’s ‘Major timber trees of Guyana: a field guide’ (Tropenbos Series 2, 1992) does not list sandalwood. Gérard, Miller and ter Welle’s ‘Major timber trees of Guyana: timber characteristics and utilization’ (Tropenbos Series 15, 1996) does not list sandalwood.
The comprehensive ‘Timbers of the New World’ by Record and Hess (1943) says (page 486) ‘There are four genera of Santalaceae [the sandalwood family] native to South America, namely Myoschilos in Chile and Patagonia; Acanthosyris in Bolivia, Brazil, and Argentina; Jodina in Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil; and Cervantesia in the mountains of Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. They are at best only little trees, and their unscented timber is of no commercial importance’.
The red sandalwood which is so valued in India for its scent, Pterocarpus santalinus, is listed in Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) but does not occur in Guyana. So what is the timber which the GFC is improperly recording?
After the vanishing act with the illegally harvested logs exported with cocaine to Jamaica (Kaieteur News Letter to the Editor, Sunday 12 June 2011 – “Invisible exports – timber logs to Jamaica unrecorded by the Guyana Forestry Commission” – https://kaieteurnewsonline.com/2011/06/12/invisible-exports-timber-logs-to-jamaica-unrecorded-by-the-guyana-forestry-commission/), the GFC’s performance is falling far short of the requirements for a legality assurance system compatible with a voluntary partnership agreement under the EU Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) action plan.
Janette Bulkan
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