Teak
Trees Certified as 'Smart'
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text of the article
Worcester Telegram & Gazette - Sunday
Telegram - February 20, 1994
by Andi Esposito, Business Editor
Costa Rica firm helps preserve rain
forest
Punta Dominical, Costa Rica - Our teak trees have doubled in
size, some of them to nearly 40 feet.
What last year were
sapling-like trunks are now thick as the forelegs of the horses we ride. And there is a
cool breeze that blows across our faces even in the humid 85-degree heat.
With their height and their huge green leaves
clattering in the wind almost as loudly as the deafening cicadas, the teak trees have
begun to create a new forest canopy in the tilted pastures of Campo Real.
RETURN OF ANIMALS
This is what excites Steve and Sherry Brunner, the
Columbus, Ohio, couple who own the 1,400-acre Campo Real and two other nearby plantations
that are all part of the Brunners' company, Tropical American Tree Farms.
The return of a canopy - the spreading, branchy layer
of forest - has brought back animals and birds that long ago abandoned Campo Real. Each
day's horseback rides into the plantation bring new discoveries of life.
One day we see a pair of redheaded woodpeckers in a
hollow tree along the Barú River. Steve Brunner, who first came to Costa Rica in the
early 1970s and fell in love with Punta Dominical from the height of a small plane, said
he and Sherry this year have also spotted a sloth, mountain lion, bumblebee hummingbird,
white hawk and "a kind of parrot I hadn't seen before."
RAINFOREST ALLIANCE
The Brunners' project is an interesting blend of
capitalism and conservation. They are reclaiming deforested hillsides by growing cash
crops of teak trees, which are not native to Costa Rica but grow easily in the red soil,
and other indigenous tropical hardwoods that bear such lovely names as purpleheart and
Cristobal. Purchased by U.S. investors like us, these trees will be managed and harvested
over the next 25 years in accord with guidelines established by the New York-based
Rainforest Alliance.
The Brunners are receiving certification from the
Rainforest Alliance as a source of Smart Wood. The Smart Wood program is the largest and
oldest forest certification program in existence, according to the alliance. The
certification enables consumers to identify products whose harvesting does not contribute
to the destruction of the rain forest. With this certification - even though their
harvests are still years away - the Brunners become one of only six certified Smart Wood
producers of tropical timber worldwide and only the second grower of teak. The other is a
state-owned forestry corporation in Java, Indonesia.
The balance of 17 or so other companies are
manufacturers and sellers.
Smart Wood is also working with Westboro-based New
England Electric System's emission offset forest project in Sabah, Malaysia.
ARBOR DAY AWARD
Along with their cash crop, the Brunners are working to
preserve rain forests on the properties they buy and to create pathways between the
smaller, island-like rain forest remnants left by farmers and scattered across their land.
By linking the remnants, these pathways will encourage animals and birds to return and
enable them to move easily again amidst thickening tropical growth.
For their work in Costa Rica, the Brunners received the
1993 Good Steward Award from the Nebraska-based National Arbor Day Foundation.
When the Brunners bought Campo Real several years ago,
there were only fragments of rain forest left on the land. Most of the towering trees had
been cut down, cleared out and burned by previous owners to make way for crops and grazing
space for cattle. Costa Rica is an agrarian country, the size of West Virginia, with a
population of about 3 million. It is a place where trees are important - for fruit, pulp
and oils - but not always understood or appreciated for how they preserve and enhance the
ecosystem.
At Campo Real, the Brunners have planted 137,000 trees;
about 45,000 are teak. The rest are native hardwoods and 6,000 flowering and fruit trees
planted singularly for their animal and bird-sheltering function.
KAYAKING
Not far from Campo Real, the Brunners last March bought
a second farm of 1,200 acres called Santo Domingo. It is different from Campo Real:
flatter, being a former rice plantation, but as beautiful in other ways.
Santo Domingo, where 127,000 teak trees were planted
between June and August 1993, is bounded on one side by the rushing Savegre River, which
even in today's hot, dry Costa Rican summer is full of white water and rapids and is a
lure to American kayakers. Another boundary to this farm is 800 acres of rain forest. Amid
vegetation that resembles doctor's office plants grown awry and vines so treacherous they
entrap horses' legs and demand the machete, we ride and marvel upon finding the biggest
trees I have ever seen.
The biggest is easily 20 feet or more from buttress to
buttress. Big old tropical hardwoods aren't simply anchored to the forest floor like some
ancient stake but appear more as if they have been half-buried. The buttresses, or what
look like shoulders, emerge wide from earth, and from atop a horse appear like a
moss-covered wall, full of nooks and crannies. The tree trunk itself soars above the
buttresses, but in the darkening tropical afternoon light, the top of the tree disappears
in the canopy.
Brunner, who has not seen this tree before, leaps from
his horse to look more closely, forgetting for a moment the danger of snakes. To have
escaped the ax and saw, this tree must always have been big.
DEMAND GROWING
The Brunners recently acquired another farm of 700
acres called Brujo. They haven't yet decided whether to plant there next year or wait a
bit. The trees they have total 250,000; there are about 125 investors. People have
different reasons for buying trees. There is, of course, the hope of greatly appreciated
return on investment. But if that comes, it will be well into the future; I'll be 70
before my last teak is harvested.
The Smart Wood certification is, however, expected to
be a powerful marketing tool for the Brunners' project. The Rainforest Alliance said the
demand for certified wood from the state-controlled Java project, for example, has been
rising 10 percent to 15 percent annually, according to Dani Sjahalam, vice president of
Lynn-Nusantera Marketing Co. Inc. in Eugene, Ore., agent for the Indonesian corporation.
Teak has been traditionally used by the boat building
industry "but now is being used for outdoor furniture," he said. Two teak chaise
lounges manufactured by Smart Wood-certified Summit Furniture Inc. of Monterey, Calif.,
sell for $2,800 and $1,750 - prices up by about 10 percent over two years, said Georgie
Kostopulos, customer representative.
But Dennis T. Leahy, owner of Wise Wood in McHenry,
Ill., a Smart Wood certified seller, cautions that "it's not yet a mainstream
audience" that is willing to pay the higher prices of certified wood.
Perhaps that will change. We are happy enough, however, with the immediate return on this
investment: that which derives from strengthening the fragile ecosystem in a country and
place we have come to love. |
