ALERT!!!
TAKE ACTION NOW!!!
Your Calls and Emails Are Needed!

OCEAN CITY, NEW JERSEY — At a public City Council meeting here yesterday (August 23), Ocean City’s City Council voted to approve advertising a call for bids for 68,000 board feet of the tropical hardwood ipê, logged from the rainforests of Brazil, for the upcoming repairs to Ocean City's historic coastal boardwalk.

Ipê is a dense hardwood logged from the dwindling rainforests of the Brazilian Amazon, where it’s estimated that eighty percent of logging is done illegally. Further, all ipê entering the US is logged from old growth rainforests, where trees are between 250 to 1000 years old.

This vote passed 6 – 1, in spite of nearly twenty people speaking against the use of the wood during public comment. Only two speakers from the public supported the use of the wood.

Ocean City has used ipê in the past, first in 1989. The next time the town went out to bid for the wood, Sister Margaret, then a teacher in the local grade school, brought her kids out against the use of rainforest wood, generating a large amount of press. The town backed off the proposal.

The issue again arose in 1995, along with a 32-page document of a 10-year plan to convert the entire 3 miles of Ocean City's boardwalks to ipê. Prepared by then-Public Works director, George Savastano, the document was full of mostly industry propoganda about the use of imported tropical hardwoods.

In an 18-month-long campaign, local activists, having formed a new grassroots organization, Friends of the Rainforest (FOR), along with Rainforest Relief, were able to again prevent the town from using rainforest woods. This time, the City Council passed a resolution calling for an end to the use of rainforest wood and calling on future administrations to carefully consider all options before changing the policy (for more information on the successful 1995/96 campaign, click here.

Well, Ocean City is at it again.

Local activists and Rainforest Relief became aware of OC's plans in a number of ways, including an article in The Press of Atlantic City. In the article, George Savastano, now the town's City Engineer, states that only wood certified by an organization accredited by the Forest Stewardship Council will be used.

Local activists have been opposed to the use of all rainforest wood since the beginning. In 1995, Rainforest Relief was supportive of the use of FSC-certified wood. However, certifications have changed a great deal in twelve years. At that time, there were no certifications in old growth rainforests of the Amazon. As well, numerous certifications have been opposed by environmental organizations on the grounds that they were logging old growth forests.

Rainforest Relief shares this position. Old growth rainforests should not be logged, period. Research has shown that even so-called "low impact" logging has a permanent negative impact on biodiversity and a rainforests ability to function over time (view/download a PDF of the Environmental News Service article on this study).

Duke University biologist Thomas Struhsaker, who conducted the study, states, "It is impractical to manage tropical forests to increase timber yield beyond that of a natural forest or even to restore damaged ecosystems - while at the same time maintaining viable populations of plant and animal species found
in old-growth forests."

In the article, Struhsaker concludes that "even so-called “sustainable” harvesting practices… are far too intensive to protect rain forest ecology. He advocates that rain forest preserves be spared completely from logging. And, for rain forests that are to be logged sustainably, harvesting must mimic natural treefalls — consisting of no more than one large tree per hectare per century, done by hand to minimize forest disruption. [emphasis added]

Tropical rainforests are so diverse that scientist are still unable to determine the number of species they contain to within two orders of magnitude. That is, they could hold 15 million or 150 million or even more than one billion species.

These forests cannot be logged commercially without long-term damage. Certainly, logging operations in old growth rainforests should not be certified as "well managed" (unless, as stated by Struhsaker, above, harvesting consists of "no more than one large tree per hectare per century, done by hand", but of course, no commercial loggers could possibly make money doing that.

The operations being certified in the Amazon by organizations like Rainforest Alliance and others accredited by the Forest Stewardship Council are almost entirely in old growth, formerly pristine forests. These operations are managed for high-value timber extraction on short rotations (typically 25 years), where these trees are being mined with little concern for regrowth into the future.

To many organizations given blanket support to the FSC, these operations are the 'lesser of two evils'. But Rainforest Relief cannot condone logging that permanently damages rainforests, while there are so many viable alternatives to old growth rainforest woods.

Speaking before Ocean City Council February 22nd, Tim Keating, director of Rainforest Relief, proposed three alternatives: recycled plastic lumber (RPL), black locust and bamboo decking.

While RPL would require increasing the boardwalk understructure (which could also be made from recycled plastic), it could last for 200 years or more, thus sparing the town enormous amounts of money in offset maintenance costs.

Black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) is a common tree in the eastern United States that has naturalized in many states and is considered an invasive in the Midwest. Black locust is rated as "extremely durable" by the USDA Forest Products Lab. It is readily available, yet little is cut commercially for lack of demand.

Finally, a new product entering the US market is durable and rapidly-renewable strand woven bamboo decking. This product resembles ipê in tone and grain and has a lifetime structural warranty, yet is made from bamboo — a grass, not a tree. It's even available with a no-slip grooved surface, which could eliminate people slipping on wet wood.

Other alternatives are certified white oak and eastern white cedar, both from local, certified second-growth logging.

Rainforest Relief and Friends of the Rainforest are calling for your help to stop the damage to an estimated 1000 acres of rainforest that will occur if Ocean City's ipê order goes through.

What You Can Do


Please call Ocean City's mayor, Sal Perillo to ask the city to consider more durable and structural recycled plastic lumber — made from the very recyclables for which towns seek markets — local, certified black locust, white oak or eastern white cedar, or rapidly renewable bamboo decking.

Mayor Salvatore Perillo
609/625-9333
City Hall
861 Asbury Avenue
Ocean City, NJ 08226

You can click the link below to send a prepared email or write your own. Please copy Rainforest Relief on your emails, info@rainforestrelief.org.

For a pre-written email to the mayor c/o the city clerk's office, click here. You can always add your own personalized text.

Please send a pre-written email to some members of Ocean City's Council by clicking here.

We must act quickly as the bid is scheduled to be advertised any day. If you are in the southern New Jersey region, please contact Rainforest Relief to help, 917/543-4064, info@rainforestrelief.org.