RR's second major campaign began in 1995 when we were contacted by Larry and Becky Carlbon, two residents of Ocean City, the famed resort town in southern New Jersey. They had read about our campaign in {Avon-by-the-Sea}, NJ, in which Avon had bid for enough tropical wood for an entire mile-long boardwalk, decking and understructure (a convoluted campaign which we ultimately lost).

OC had developed a ten-year master plan that called for the complete conversion of their 3.5 mile boardwalk to a tropical wood called ipe, mostly illegally logged from the Amazon rainforests of Brazil — a wood that has become extremely popular for boardwalks and other waterfront construction and now even home decks.

What ensued would entail thousands of hours, numerous demonstrations, dozens of news articles and letters to the editor in the local and regional papers, a "Boardwalk-a-Thon", area businesses, dozens of town meetings and dozens of OC residents (who eventually formed a grassroots groups called Friends of the Rainforest), and would last a total of 22 months, before Ocean City City Council would finally vote to spare the rainforests and end the use of tropical hardwoods for their boardwalk.

Various elements in Ocean City are now calling for revisiting the Council’s commitment.