Love from China: illegally forested wood products

Filed under: Home , News , Polit-eco As you wander through Wal-Mart and J.C. Penny and run your hand over a lovely varnished Mission style oak kitchen table set for only $200.00 do you ever wonder how they manage to price such a pretty item so cheaply? Is it shoddy construction? Is it international workers paid a pittance? Or is it wood chopped down illegally in Russia and shipped to China for use on a variety of wood products? Bingo. China is the largest importer of logs and exporter of finished wood products, and it gets all that wood from Russia. Primorski Krai is a Russian province with an abundance of hardwoods like oak, ash and linden. The region once also had a plentiful population of pine until most of it was cut down. About half of all the logs sent to China from Primorski Krai is illegally logged. That’s of roughly five billion pounds of wood shipped from the region each year. This is especially troubling because the region is home to one of the North...