The Driving Forces of Destruction Commercial logging is the single largest cause of rainforest destruction both directly and indirectly. Logging tropical hardwoods like teak, mahogany, rosewood and other timber for furniture, building materials, charcoal and other wood products is big business and big profits. Several species of tropical hardwoods are imported by developed counties, including America, just to build coffins which are then buried or burned. The demand, extraction and consumption of tropical hardwoods has been so massive that some countries which have been traditional exporters of tropical hardwoods are now importing them because they have already exhausted their supply by destroying their native rainforests in slash and burn operations. It is anticipated that The Phillippines, Malaysia, The Ivory Coast, Nigeria and Thailand will soon follow as all these countries will run out of rainforest hardwood timber for export in less than five years.
Japan is the largest importer of tropical woods.
Logging rainforest timber is a large economic source, and in many cases, the main source of revenues for servicing the national debt of developing countries. Logging profits are real to these countries who must service their debts, but are they are fleeting. Governments are selling their assets too cheaply, and once the rainforest is gone, their source of income is gone. Sadly, most of the real profits of the timber trade are made not by the developing countries, but by multi-national companies and industrialists of the northern hemisphere. These huge profit driven companies pay governments a fraction of the timber's worth for large logging concessions on immense tracts of rainforest land and reap huge profits by harvesting the timber in the most economical manner feasible with little regard to the destruction left in their wake.