Speaker 1: School of Humans.
Speaker 2: The Gibson Guitar Plant in Nashville is not much to
Speaker 2: look at. It's a one story brick building seven miles
Speaker 2: east of downtown, wedged between a bend in the road
Speaker 2: and a few parking lots. But this is where music
Speaker 2: history is literally made. Bb King, Joan Jett, Eric Clapton,
Speaker 2: Keith Richards, Sister Rosetta Tharp, Eddie van Halen, and Muddy Waters,
Speaker 2: even Sheryl Crowe. Gibson is the guitar choice of legends.
Speaker 2: That magic is what attracted Bill Gibbs to take a
Speaker 2: job there.
Speaker 3: Imagine growing up being a kid who played guitar all
Speaker 3: your life, and now you get to work at the
Speaker 3: candy store where all the goodies are made.
Speaker 2: It was a dream job, at least at first. Gibbons
Speaker 2: admits the work wore him down. The demands were high,
Speaker 2: the hours long. And then on November seventeenth, two thousand and.
Speaker 3: Nine, I was on a lunch break. One of my
Speaker 3: Gibson friends from the plant texted me and said, dude,
Speaker 3: we're being raided.
Speaker 2: Dozens of armed officers, federal marshals, and special agents with
Speaker 2: the US Fish and Wildlife Service storm the floor. They
Speaker 2: tell everybody to stop working and begin rummaging through the shop.
Speaker 2: Agents tear through containers, boxes and palaces. They rifle through
Speaker 2: papers and filing cabins, and then they crack open four
Speaker 2: green tubs holding planks of wood, deep black in color.
Speaker 3: Bingo, my friend that text me back. Apparently it's about
Speaker 3: illegal wood.
Speaker 2: The wooden question is called Diospyros pararii, but most people
Speaker 2: know it as ebony. It's from Madagascar. It's dense, rare,
Speaker 2: and perfect for making high end guitars. Givens and the
Speaker 2: team are confused. Ebeny is precious, sure, but it's also
Speaker 2: been used on guitars for decades. Like, what's the deal.
Speaker 3: They're like, ah, you know, it's probably nothing. You know,
Speaker 3: might have been a mistake or whatever.
Speaker 2: The government confiscates all the wood, and eventually Givens would
Speaker 2: go back to work and forget all about it until
Speaker 2: two years later, August twenty eleven, and it happens again.
Speaker 3: It was one of those days where we knew it
Speaker 3: was going to be a long night. I think we
Speaker 3: were all exhausted and they came in. We heard we're
Speaker 3: being rated. We're being rated. Everyone to the back and
Speaker 3: they all gathered us all into like the lumberyard area.
Speaker 2: Thirty federal officers entered the guitar factory. Many of them aren't.
Speaker 3: Apparently there were ar fifteens. It was never like a
Speaker 3: threatening or scary environment at all. It was just like, okay, well,
Speaker 3: let's let them in.
Speaker 2: The Feds turn the place upside down. All in all,
Speaker 2: they seize an estimated half a million dollars worth of
Speaker 2: Dalbergia sissu, a rosewood from India.
Speaker 3: And it was just like, oh God, here we go again.
Speaker 2: I'm Summer rain Oaks from School of Humans and iHeart podcasts.
Speaker 2: This is bad seeds. Okay, do you want to say
Speaker 2: something dad?
Speaker 4: Hello? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Okay, that's working perfect, all right? So you brought over
Speaker 2: your black less Paul. This has been yours for how long?
Speaker 3: When did you get this?
Speaker 5: I boked this in nineteen seventy three?
Speaker 3: And why did you buy it? What was the allure?
Speaker 5: The allure was a friend of mine was in a
Speaker 5: band and he had a black less Paul custom. I said,
Speaker 5: if you ever want to sell it, let me know.
Speaker 5: So he said, yeah, I'll sell it to you. I
Speaker 5: played it in garage bands when I was up and coming, and.
Speaker 3: I mean it is black. It's black as night.
Speaker 2: I mean, is this like a like? Is this ebony
Speaker 2: or like?
Speaker 3: What kind of Is it a hardwood?
Speaker 5: It's got an ebony fretboard.
Speaker 2: Gibson guitars are frankly part of my family, especially they're
Speaker 2: less Pall models, which is considered one of the finest
Speaker 2: guitars ever made. I remember seeing it around the house,
Speaker 2: hearing my dad play it a bit, but I never
Speaker 2: really thought much about the black wood it was made
Speaker 2: of or where it came from. At Gibson Gene Knicks
Speaker 2: had to think about those questions. In June of two
Speaker 2: thousand and eight, he boarded a flight for Madagascar, and
Speaker 2: for the next two and a half weeks, he and
Speaker 2: two other major guitar makers explored the country as part
Speaker 2: of a fact finding mission, learning if it was still
Speaker 2: possible to legally harvest Diospiro's Parade Madagascar ebony. After the trip,
Speaker 2: Nix discussed the challenges in an email with his colleagues.
Speaker 6: The true ebony species preferred by Gibson Musical instruments is
Speaker 6: found only in Madagascar. This is a slow growing tree
Speaker 6: species with very little conservation protection and supplies are considered
Speaker 6: to be highly threatened in its native environment due to overexploitation.
Speaker 2: High end musical instrument manufacturers you should know, are picky
Speaker 2: about their wood, and for good reason. Every tree has
Speaker 2: a different density that affects the quality of an instrument's sound,
Speaker 2: and certain woods are better than others. Alan Schwartz is
Speaker 2: a good friend of mine and he's supplied wood for instruments,
Speaker 2: and it's a tough job.
Speaker 4: I have for a while supplied African blackwood, which has
Speaker 4: been used to make woodwend instruments because it's extreme stability
Speaker 4: and the fact that I don't know if you've ever
Speaker 4: played a woodwind instrument, I mean they get really disgusting
Speaker 4: in guy and messy and full of spitz and mucus
Speaker 4: and god knows what else when you play it. It
Speaker 4: has to be a material that does not change with moisture,
Speaker 4: because otherwise the notes will change.
Speaker 2: Each instrument is different. High end clarinets sound best made
Speaker 2: from woods like grenadilla from Eritrea, ukuleles from the Flowering
Speaker 2: Poetry of Hawaii, and piano soundboards spruce, and the more
Speaker 2: high end and instrument, the pickier a manufacturer is. Take pianos,
Speaker 2: American maid steinways only use Sitka spruce from British Columbia.
Speaker 2: The Austrian brand Buzendorferm only uses Austrian spruce grown at
Speaker 2: a very specific elevation, and Betzioli in Italy only uses
Speaker 2: spruce from the Fima Valley of northern Italy, the same
Speaker 2: forest that produced the world famous Strata Varius violins. Problem
Speaker 2: is what's good for the instrument isn't always good for
Speaker 2: the tree, like the African blackwood. Alan once supplied.
Speaker 4: African blackwood, which grows in all of Dry Africa and
Speaker 4: even up the Rift Valley as far north as Armenia
Speaker 4: as a plant, was used in Biblical times for woodwind instruments,
Speaker 4: but it has become successively rarer.
Speaker 2: As one's gone along, a lot of musical woods are
Speaker 2: becoming exceedingly rare, and it's putting manufacturers in a bind.
Speaker 2: In the violin world, the best bows are made from
Speaker 2: Brazilian pernambuco aka pow Brasilia echinata, but today the tree
Speaker 2: is endangered. Guitar makers face the same problem making fingerboards.
Speaker 2: Diospiro's Paraii or Madagascar ebony, is one of the woods
Speaker 2: of choice. It's dense and handsome, deep black in color,
Speaker 2: but it's slow to grow and difficult to replace, and
Speaker 2: now it's illegal to harvest unless an act of God,
Speaker 2: such as a storm, causes the tree to fall. In fact,
Speaker 2: according to side the International Treaty Guiding the Trade of
Speaker 2: Plants and Animals, quote, nearly all of the large diospirros
Speaker 2: parie trees have disappeared from western Madagascar.
Speaker 4: When you watch the movies of Madagascar, you really have
Speaker 4: this expectation of a tremendously feaken place, and when you
Speaker 4: get there it is definitely not that. It really just
Speaker 4: doesn't have any of that biodversity left.
Speaker 2: In two thousand and eight, Gibson execs landed in Madagascar
Speaker 2: in hopes of finding some of that lost biodiversity. When
Speaker 2: they returned, they came home with news of a miracle.
Speaker 2: A local ebony supplier had all the right paperwork. All
Speaker 2: of the boxes were checked with notorizations and signatures from
Speaker 2: all the proper government officials. When Gibson began exporting the
Speaker 2: ebony to custom officials in Africa and Europe gave shipments
Speaker 2: a thumbs up. But when it got to the Gibson warehouse,
Speaker 2: well you know the rest of the story. The Feds
Speaker 2: pounced and Gibson CEO Henry Juskowitz was livid.
Speaker 7: At first. I thought it was a joke because we
Speaker 7: make guitars and I'm not aware of any threatening issues
Speaker 7: with the guitar business.
Speaker 2: Bill Gibbons remembers the company blasting the government for overreach.
Speaker 3: They got their media team together because I think they
Speaker 3: knew they were going to be under the radar, and
Speaker 3: they put together this short film talking about the government
Speaker 3: coming after them.
Speaker 2: In a letter to the court, the company's lawyers argued
Speaker 2: that the wood was perfectly legal, and they had the
Speaker 2: paperwork to prove it.
Speaker 8: This is not a case of inaction by the Maticascer government,
Speaker 8: nor is it a case where ebony wood was cut
Speaker 8: and shipped under cover of darkness without the knowledge of
Speaker 8: Madagascar officials.
Speaker 2: With this statement, the Gibson legal team was alluding to
Speaker 2: a very real problem in the United States and the
Speaker 2: Gifford Pinchot National Forest in Washington State, a ring of
Speaker 2: wood thieves stole about eight hundred thousand dollars worth of
Speaker 2: protected timber, and they were trafficking it to musical instrument manufacturers,
Speaker 2: including PRS Guitars, an American company that makes guitars for
Speaker 2: musicians like Carlos Santana. Gibson's lawyers were adamant, hey, we're
Speaker 2: not doing that. They were sourcing wood from a German
Speaker 2: supplier with a century's worth of experience. The wood was
Speaker 2: certified by NGOs like the Rainforest Alliance and the Forest
Speaker 2: Stewardship Council. But was this seizure really a miscarriage of
Speaker 2: justice or did the government know something we don't. The
Speaker 2: raid at Gibson happened because of a one hundred and
Speaker 2: twenty two year old law, one that originally had nothing
Speaker 2: to do with guitars or wood, or, for that matter,
Speaker 2: plants at all. The law was originally about feathers. It's
Speaker 2: the late nineteenth century, and if you're a Manhattan socialite
Speaker 2: looking to turn heads, then you've got to wear a hat,
Speaker 2: be dazzled in flowers, jewels and ribbons. But if you
Speaker 2: really want to impress, you got to have bird feathers.
Speaker 2: Feather hats are all the rage at some department stores.
Speaker 2: They sell for more than three thousand dollars in today's money.
Speaker 2: In fact, the feather fashion industry employs some eighty thousand people.
Speaker 2: Folks living in wetlands from Massachusetts to Florida are happy
Speaker 2: to meet the demand too, with bird feathers selling for
Speaker 2: more than fifteen dollars an ounce. They slaughter approximately five
Speaker 2: million birds a year, but not everybody is happy about this.
Speaker 2: By the late eighteen hundreds, Americans have watched beavers and
Speaker 2: bison nearly disappear. Birds are next. The newly founded Audubon
Speaker 2: Society begins pleading with the government do something. Audubon finds
Speaker 2: a sympathetic ear in Congressman John F. Lacey, a conservationist.
Speaker 2: Lacey authors a bill making it a federal crime to
Speaker 2: transport wildlife from one state to another. The new Lacy
Speaker 2: Act has an immediate impact. It becomes illegal to kill
Speaker 2: birds in Florida and sell the feathers in New York.
Speaker 2: It effectively kills the trend and saves many birds from extinction.
Speaker 2: Over the century, the Lacy Act would balloon. By two
Speaker 2: thousand and eight, it would expand to protect plants and trees,
Speaker 2: and its enforcement powers are wide because if you or
Speaker 2: your supplier commit a wildlife crime outside the country, the
Speaker 2: US still has the authority to enforce the law. When
Speaker 2: Feds raided Gibson, they pointed to the Lacy Act. Somewhere
Speaker 2: along the supply chain. They claimed there was wrongdoing. Gibson
Speaker 2: CEO did not like that explanation.
Speaker 7: We have affid davids from government officials in Madagascar that
Speaker 7: say that it's perfectly legal to do what we did.
Speaker 2: The issue became a cause celeb among the political right,
Speaker 2: even making its way into the halls of Congress.
Speaker 1: Last month, agents rated the Gibson Guitar factory in Tennessee.
Speaker 1: Why because Gibson bought wood overseas to make guitars in
Speaker 1: America And.
Speaker 6: There's no Grizzly Bears in downtown Nashville or in Gibson
Speaker 6: Guitar that we need to be concerned with.
Speaker 2: But inside Gibson, people like Gibbons were starting to wonder.
Speaker 3: I figured maybe there was nothing to see here. I
Speaker 3: don't know what this is the second rate I'm aware of.
Speaker 3: At this point, I'm thinking something's going on.
Speaker 2: None of this makes sense, Neither did the paper trail.
Speaker 2: Court filings show that Gibson ordered the wood through a
Speaker 2: company in Hamburg, Germany. The Germans had purchased the ebony
Speaker 2: from an exporter in Madagascar, a guy named Roger Tuna.
Speaker 2: The wood was sign at Tunam's mill, placed on a
Speaker 2: vessel from Portavuima and stowed on a ship called the
Speaker 2: Liverpool Express, which traveled from Hamburg to New York to Charleston,
Speaker 2: South Carolina. In court documents, Gibson's lawyers argued the paperwork
Speaker 2: proved there was no violation of the Laciact.
Speaker 8: Neither the import from madagasc Or into Germany nor the
Speaker 8: subsequent export from Germany to the USA were objected by
Speaker 8: the German or European community authorities.
Speaker 2: Lawyers for the wood supplier in Germany were even more forceful.
Speaker 9: My client protests with all emphasis against the allegations said
Speaker 9: he as a member or supporter of a worldwide Lumba mafia,
Speaker 9: said unlawfully exploits topic rainforests.
Speaker 2: But all the paperwork in the world and all these
Speaker 2: claims of innocence didn't wipe away the fact that something
Speaker 2: was fishy, because Roger Tuna, the man running the mill
Speaker 2: in Madagascar, was not who he was made out to be,
Speaker 2: and it would take a retired marine working under cover
Speaker 2: to unmask him.
Speaker 10: My name is Alexander von Bismarck, and I'm the executive
Speaker 10: director of the Environmental Investigation Agency the problem is that
Speaker 10: when you buy the furniture or something, it's really hard
Speaker 10: to know what criminality is at the beginning, and who
Speaker 10: knew in the middle right of the chain.
Speaker 11: The person selling to you can say I had no idea.
Speaker 11: Everybody told me this was fine.
Speaker 2: But von Bismarck's a smart guy. He's a Harvard grad
Speaker 2: and an expert on wildlife poaching. He's heard these excuses before,
Speaker 2: and for.
Speaker 11: That reason particularly, we tend to go undercovered.
Speaker 2: In two thousand and nine, Alexander von Bismarck assumes a
Speaker 2: new identity. He sets up a fake timber company with
Speaker 2: a phony website and fake business cards. He flies south
Speaker 2: to Madagascar and weasels his way into the country's timber mafia,
Speaker 2: claiming he's a businessman on the hunt for a legal rosewood.
Speaker 11: When you're having open business to business conversations, the truth
Speaker 11: reveals itself pretty quickly.
Speaker 2: Von Bismarck comes to the timber barons armed with questions, how.
Speaker 11: Do you do this, how much does the wood cost,
Speaker 11: how many bribes do you have to pay, who do
Speaker 11: you have to pay? How do you get it out?
Speaker 11: Even though there's a zero export quota.
Speaker 2: In fact, those conversations lead him right into the office
Speaker 2: of Roger Tuna. The timber baron has no clue that
Speaker 2: his guest is carrying hidden cameras and a GPS. Tunam
Speaker 2: shows him around the lumberyard and discussions quickly turn to
Speaker 2: how Tunam sources his trees. They're not being felled by
Speaker 2: acts of God, They're being deliberately and illegally chopped down
Speaker 2: from a national For von Bismarck, this confession isn't enough.
Speaker 2: He asks to see the product for himself. Tunam agrees,
Speaker 2: and a logger leads von Bismarck deep into the nationally
Speaker 2: protected forest. He sees the stumps with his own eyes.
Speaker 2: He tags locations with the GPS. His guides even show
Speaker 2: him the towering trees that are quite literally on the
Speaker 2: chopping block. When they take von Bismarck down to a
Speaker 2: nearby river, he floats past two hundred boats hauling the
Speaker 2: trunks of illegally logged trees, and then he visits Tunam's mill.
Speaker 2: There are saw blades screaming with stacks of ebony piled
Speaker 2: four hundred yards deep. At one point, he asks his
Speaker 2: guides about a stack of dark planks. They speak nonchalantly.
Speaker 2: How that would it's being cut for guitars. I can't
Speaker 2: say it's the same as going under cover, but I
Speaker 2: remember having a similar experience. I was lucky enough to
Speaker 2: visit Madagascar ten years ago, and I remember we were
Speaker 2: walking this large field with our guide and I kept
Speaker 2: seeing these ferns growing and I thought, this is weird.
Speaker 2: Ferns don't grow in fields. Ferns grow in and around forests.
Speaker 2: And when I spotted this chameleon, this poor chameleon, and
Speaker 2: I thought, again, you'd expect it to be living in
Speaker 2: a bunch of trees. And then we started seeing the
Speaker 2: stumps and I realized this is the forest or it was.
Speaker 2: It's gutting, and not only does it hurt the forest,
Speaker 2: it hurts the people who live around it. My friend Alan,
Speaker 2: the guy who sourced wood for instruments, he was there
Speaker 2: with me, and he recalls seeing people carving a plain
Speaker 2: white wood and then treating it with something.
Speaker 4: What they were doing is taking a mix of red
Speaker 4: and black shoe polish to kind of give.
Speaker 2: It a with the most beautiful woods destroyed. People recovering
Speaker 2: plain woods with shoe polish to pass them off as ebony.
Speaker 2: Allan who does most of his work in Mozambique, has
Speaker 2: seen the effects of this indiscriminate cutting firsthand.
Speaker 4: The number of timber exporters has diminished dramatically. The government
Speaker 4: claims that it is clamped down and it has reduced
Speaker 4: the log exports, but it's not reduced because the government
Speaker 4: did anything, because they did nothing. It's reduced because there
Speaker 4: isn't anything left to sell.
Speaker 2: Madagascar has technically tried to avoid this same fate. It's
Speaker 2: passed laws to keep lumber collection sustainable. In two thousand,
Speaker 2: the government made it illegal to explore unfinished wood products
Speaker 2: from the country. This included the sawed down wood Gibson
Speaker 2: was received, and in two thousand and six they banned
Speaker 2: the cutting and extra action of any type of rosewood
Speaker 2: or ebony. Then in two thousand and nine they made
Speaker 2: a list of just thirteen people who were licensed to
Speaker 2: export rosewood and ebony. Roger Tunam was not on that list.
Speaker 2: Gibson's ebony collection violated all of those laws, and it
Speaker 2: was very likely coming from a national protected park. Faced
Speaker 2: with this information, Gibson's lawyers appear to have moved the goalposts.
Speaker 8: If the wood had been illegal, or if Tunam did
Speaker 8: not have government authorization to export the wood, then one
Speaker 8: of the many Malagasy officials involved in the process would
Speaker 8: have prevented the shipments from leaving the country.
Speaker 2: If the wood was so illegal, then how did Tunam
Speaker 2: get these shipments rubber stamped by the government? How did
Speaker 2: he sneak it past NGOs like the Rainforest Alliance. Alexander
Speaker 2: von Bismarck has an answer to that.
Speaker 11: The corruption was so high level that paperwork could be
Speaker 11: really seem pristine enough to get through even neighboring countries
Speaker 11: that are supposed to not allow that trade.
Speaker 2: In fact, it was good enough to fool the Forest
Speaker 2: Stewardship Council or FSC if you don't.
Speaker 11: Know exactly where it's from. Unfortunately, even a sticker like
Speaker 11: FSC is not a guarantee these days at all.
Speaker 2: That's because at the time FC didn't verify or control
Speaker 2: the legitimacy of a wood harvest. It based its ratings
Speaker 2: on risk assessments, and apparently the risks were higher than
Speaker 2: they had imagined. In a country where the majority of
Speaker 2: the nation lives on a dollar a day and the
Speaker 2: rule of law is weak, bribes go far. Here's what
Speaker 2: one malagassy official told the Environmental Investigation.
Speaker 12: Agency Rumorzebat ve carription of our agents circulate where involvement
Speaker 12: would consist of closing their eyes when vice surprise lagers
Speaker 12: in the park in exchange for a c amount.
Speaker 2: In fact, not long before von Bismarck had made his
Speaker 2: undercover visit, the district head of environment and Forests, the
Speaker 2: person with the power to issue and collect permits, was
Speaker 2: arrested and Roger tunam while it was an open secret
Speaker 2: that he was a timber bearer. In the words of
Speaker 2: one local.
Speaker 12: Official, Tuna mis not a business man, He's a traffica.
Speaker 2: The question is did Gibson know this and if they did,
Speaker 2: when did they know it. Here are the facts. The
Speaker 2: man supplying Gibson with the goods was a known documented poacher.
Speaker 2: The wood was extracted illegally, it was exported illegally with
Speaker 2: phony paperwork, and since Gibson was in possession of illegal timber,
Speaker 2: the Leasy Act gave the federal government a right to
Speaker 2: seize it. But Gibson's management still cried foul. After all,
Speaker 2: it wasn't their fault. They were just trusting their supplier
Speaker 2: in Germany. They were trusting the certifications from prominent NGOs.
Speaker 2: This sounds fair at first, blush, but Alan doesn't have
Speaker 2: much sympathy.
Speaker 4: You look at the guys who relied on a certifier
Speaker 4: to say that they would was fine a third party,
Speaker 4: and they bought timber from Madagascar, and they got into
Speaker 4: terrible trouble because even though it was certified, when somebody
Speaker 4: actually looked at it closely, it may have had a certificate,
Speaker 4: but it was actually illegal. And that was Gibson. They're
Speaker 4: gone in a terrible trouble, and they deserve to get
Speaker 4: into trouble because they bought stuff which they didn't actually
Speaker 4: check properly, and they relied on some bloody tick box
Speaker 4: to tell them that it was okay.
Speaker 2: In court documents, Fed suggests that Gibson could file a
Speaker 2: civil lawsuit if they had unknowingly bought corrupted wood, then
Speaker 2: that made them victims of fraud, but Gibson never sued.
Speaker 2: The reason why is anybody's guess. But according to court documents,
Speaker 2: Gibson's top brass allegedly knew about Roger Tunam because remember
Speaker 2: Gene Nix, the Gibson employee who visited Madagascar in two
Speaker 2: thousand and eight in search of a solid legal source
Speaker 2: of ebony, he had visited Tunam's lumberyard. In an email,
Speaker 2: he wrote that Tunam's supply was under seizure from the
Speaker 2: Madagascar government.
Speaker 6: It's under temporary seizure. It cannot be moved, substantial stored
Speaker 6: quantities of cut items for export, including blanks for various instruments,
Speaker 6: mostly ebony.
Speaker 2: In another email, Nis openly told his colleagues that at
Speaker 2: the time exporting wood was banned.
Speaker 6: All legal timber and wood exports are prohibited because of
Speaker 6: widespread corruption and theft of valuable woods like rosewood in ebony.
Speaker 2: In other words, Gibson's own man on the ground notified
Speaker 2: leadership of the risks. The following year, an email received
Speaker 2: by eleven top people at the company contained an attachment
Speaker 2: showing that only one person had any legal right to
Speaker 2: export Madagascar ebony. That person was not Roger Tunam. In fact,
Speaker 2: a government affidavit shows that quote all the legal ebony
Speaker 2: stock inventories which had been approved by the Madagascar government
Speaker 2: had been exported prior to April two thousand and nine.
Speaker 2: Yet the guitar maker continued ordering wood from Tunam through
Speaker 2: its middleman in Germany. As Nicks put it in.
Speaker 6: An email, mister Tunam should now be able to supply
Speaker 6: our middleman with all the rosewood and ebony for the
Speaker 6: gray market.
Speaker 2: The market a shady market that put the survival of
Speaker 2: this gorgeous ebony at risk. But when those raids happened
Speaker 2: at the Gibson plant in Nashville, Bill Gibbons says, that
Speaker 2: didn't seem to be a concern.
Speaker 3: Nobody cared about the environmental impacts. From my perspective and
Speaker 3: what I saw, it was about keeping the machine going,
Speaker 3: and those motivations varied depending on who you talked to.
Speaker 2: Gibson would ultimately settle with the government. It agreed to
Speaker 2: pay a three hundred thousand dollars fine plus a fifty
Speaker 2: thousand donation to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. Gibson's
Speaker 2: CEO insisted the settlement was not an admission of guilt,
Speaker 2: and while the facts of the Gibson raid were a
Speaker 2: bad look for the guitar manufacturer, it was worse for
Speaker 2: the Forest Stewardship Council and the Rainforest Alliance, which had
Speaker 2: mistakenly certified illegal wood. These certifications are relied upon by
Speaker 2: corporations across the globe. Later investigations by the Tennesseean newspaper
Speaker 2: would reveal that, starting in two thousand and six, the
Speaker 2: Rainforest Alliance had accepted yearly cash gifts from Gibson ranging
Speaker 2: from three hundred and fifteen thousand dollars to three hundred
Speaker 2: and ninety thousand dollars, making the guitar manufacturer one of
Speaker 2: the Alliance's biggest donors. The Alliance has denied the donations
Speaker 2: had any influence, but the investigation revealed other holes, namely,
Speaker 2: the Gibson's chairman and CEO, Henry Jeskowitz, was serving on
Speaker 2: the Rainforest's Alliance board of directors at the time the
Speaker 2: ebony was being certified. All of these connections might convince
Speaker 2: you to grab a tinfoil hat to find a conspiracy
Speaker 2: in the works.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 2: We reached out to Gibson to hear if they had
Speaker 2: any response. In an email, they insisted, quote, this was
Speaker 2: well over a decade ago. Gibson is an entirely new company,
Speaker 2: and that's true. The company's leadership is now very different,
Speaker 2: and frankly, we're not trying to stick Gibson's nose in it. Rather,
Speaker 2: it's a bit of a parable of a much larger
Speaker 2: problem that verifying the sustainability of wood is really really challenging.
Speaker 2: But it's not impossible. I know, because Alan has a story.
Speaker 4: So Taylor guitars use ebony for their fingerboards, and they
Speaker 4: had previously been buying from Central Africa, Congo whatever through
Speaker 4: dealers and Bob Taylor he was buying stuff and he said,
Speaker 4: you know, I don't really understand all of this because
Speaker 4: in reading the documentation that he got from the certified timber,
Speaker 4: he said, you know, I remember hearing a story about
Speaker 4: the bullshit that was going on in Congo. So he
Speaker 4: called me and he said, what's the story? And I said,
Speaker 4: look at the bloody disas that these guys have got
Speaker 4: a certification but they've actually looked it out to the
Speaker 4: forest and it's all legal, but it's certainly not moral.
Speaker 4: And he said, well what do we do? And I said, well,
Speaker 4: you know, let's look for somebody who's also got ebony
Speaker 4: and see if they are doing it sustainably. And you
Speaker 4: couldn't find anybody. He wrote an incredibly fat check to
Speaker 4: the guys in the bush to say this is what
Speaker 4: you need in order to make this sustainable. He then
Speaker 4: to know fat check to the forestry department of the
Speaker 4: university and said, you've got to work out how to
Speaker 4: do this and make sure that I'm having proper sustainable
Speaker 4: ebony for mar guitars. And there's a different level of responsibility.
Speaker 4: They actually are doing the job to see to it
Speaker 4: directly that it is sustainable.
Speaker 2: In other words, the best way to know the source
Speaker 2: of your wood is to actually go to the source.
Speaker 2: And this kind of sustainability it isn't just a buzzword
Speaker 2: or a box to check. Honestly, it's just a good business.
Speaker 4: And more important, they are going to outlift all the
Speaker 4: other guitar mankers because they're going to have the materials.
Speaker 2: Coming up.
Speaker 12: Five years ago, you see mccule ere, we were Yees Province.
Speaker 4: Now there is nothing.
Speaker 11: The corruption was so high level that the paperwork could
Speaker 11: be really seem pristine enough to get through even neighboring
Speaker 11: countries that are supposed to not allow that trade.
Speaker 2: I'm Summer rain Oaks. Join us again next time for
Speaker 2: Bad Seeds. Bad Seeds is a production of School of
Speaker 2: Humans and iHeart Podcasts. I'm your host Summer rain Oaks.
Speaker 2: Lucas Riley is our writer. Gabby Watts is our producer
Speaker 2: and Amelia Brock is our senior producer. Fact Checking is
Speaker 2: by Savannah Hugely and Zoe Farrow. Original music is by
Speaker 2: Claire Campbell. Sound design and score is by Jesse Niswanger.
Speaker 2: Our show art is by Pam Peacock. Development was by
Speaker 2: Brian Lavin and Jacob Selzer. Special thanks to our voice
Speaker 2: actors Andy Sandford, Joel Ruiz, ben Etter and Dicana Riccotto.
Speaker 2: Executive producers are Brian Lavin, Elsie Crowley, Brandon Barr, Virginia
Speaker 2: Prescott and Jacob Selzer.