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Illegal logging thins Madagascar forests

NAGOYA, Japan, Oct. 26 (UPI) -- Chinese demand for exotic hardwood and political unrest in Madagascar drive illegal logging threatening that island nation's hardwood forests, a report says.

The report by Global Witness and the Environment Investigation Agency was presented at the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity meeting in Nagoya, Japan, the BBC reported.

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Investigators said an estimated 98 percent of illegally harvested hardwood from Madagascar ends up in China, much of it in luxury reproduction furniture that can fetch extraordinary prices, like $1 million for a bed made of exotic woods.

The problem is made worse by Madagascar's chaotic political situation, split between factions of ex-President Marc Ravalomana and the rival who ousted him in a 2009 coup, Andry Rajoelina.

The illegal extraction of timber is flourishing amidst the political tug-of-war, the EIA/Global Witness report found.

"The pre-existing problem of illegal logging was turned into a flood of tree-cutting in national parks, and a flood of wood out of Madagascar to China and the West," Alexander von Bismarck, EIA's executive director, says.

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