[Dixielandjazz] Musical Instruments and banned wood. Lacey Act Update

[Stephen G Barbone]

October 25, 2011 - NY TIMES - by Kathryn Marie Dudley
Luthiers: The Latest Endangered Species

WHEN federal authorities raided the headquarters of the Gibson Guitar  
Corporation in late August, seizing wood they said was illegally  
exported from India, conservative critics denounced the episode as an  
example of regulatory overreach. Newt Gingrich, the former House  
speaker and now Republican presidential hopeful, accused the Obama  
administration of having a “vendetta” against small businesses; the  
current speaker, John A. Boehner, invited Gibson’s owner, Henry E.  
Juszkiewicz, to sit in the speaker’s box during President Obama’s jobs  
speech last month.

The law that investigators enforced in the August raid is indeed  
flawed — but not for the reasons critics cite. Large companies like  
Gibson, if they source their wood carefully, should be O.K. The people  
who are truly in jeopardy are some of the finest artisanal guitar  
makers in the United States and Canada. Unlike Gibson, these  
independent artisans — also called luthiers — have been charged with  
no crime, but their livelihoods and life savings are at risk  
nonetheless.

The root of guitar makers’ trouble is the Lacey Act, a law originally  
enacted in 1900 to prohibit the interstate sale of poached game. In  
2008, the act was amended to combat illegal logging around the world.  
Protections for endangered plants were extended to cover trees logged  
in violation of foreign law; and importers of wood were required to  
declare the species and country of harvest for all commercially traded  
timber, sawed lumber and finished wood products.

Acting on suspicions raised by inaccurate Lacey declarations, armed  
agents raided Gibson’s factory in Nashville in November 2009 and again  
in August to determine whether Gibson had accepted ebony imports in  
violation of laws in Madagascar and India. Gibson has denied any  
wrongdoing.

The Lacey Act amendments were well intended — few people wish to  
encourage illegal logging overseas — but the act was aimed at bulk  
freight and industrial inventory, not the practices of luthiers, who  
hand-select small quantities of wood and season it for decades, often  
passing it from one generation to the next.

When importers make declarations under the Lacey Act, they are also  
claiming that they have complied with other laws, like the Convention  
on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.  
This international treaty, adopted in 1973, outlawed global trade in  
elephant ivory in 1975 and Brazilian rosewood in 1992. But well- 
established luthiers — particularly the 100 or so who have been  
handcrafting and restoring stringed instruments for over 40 years —  
have stockpiles of ivory and wood that were acquired before the bans  
were put in place.

While manufacturers have increasingly turned to sustainable  
alternatives to guitar makers’ traditional tonewoods, this option is  
largely unavailable to artisans who build a small number of  
instruments each year. Their inability to document the source and age  
of their materials exposes them to bankrupting fines and confiscations.

As a result, North American luthiers now sit on valuable supplies of  
Brazilian rosewood they are afraid to use, since guitars made with it  
cannot legally cross American borders — a liability for traveling  
musicians and international collectors. For self-employed artisans who  
often have no health insurance or 401(k) plans, these stashes of rare  
wood are the only retirement savings they have.

House members have now put forward a proposal — the Retailers and  
Entertainers Lacey Implementation and Enforcement Fairness Act, or the  
Relief Act — to limit the declaration requirements under the Lacey  
amendment to solid wood and commercially imported goods, and to lift  
declaration requirements for wood and wood products imported or  
manufactured before May 2008.

While the bill may help guitar stores and musicians, it fails to  
address the problem facing artisanal builders.

Easing the declaration requirements doesn’t affect the underlying  
legality of the wildlife materials in a guitar. The international sale  
of Brazilian rosewood guitars or vintage instruments with ivory nuts  
and saddles would still be illegal (under the convention) and guitars  
with decorative inlay could still be detained by customs agents  
looking for certain species of abalone shell (restricted under the  
Endangered Species Act).

What artisanal makers urgently need is a way to certify the legality  
of instruments built with materials they acquired before the trade  
convention and endangered species laws. Any workable solution needs to  
acknowledge that an artisanal instrument is not a mass-produced  
object: it has a unique history and character. For example, it should  
be enough for luthiers to provide a sworn affidavit to show that their  
Brazilian rosewood was obtained before 1992. Judgments must be made on  
a case-by-case basis. That is why many luthiers favor the issuing of  
passport-like documents, with photographs and serial numbers, for  
vintage and handmade guitars.

The Gibson case has attracted attention far beyond the noisy  
agitations of the right — not because the actions of the federal  
government were wrong, but because the future of North American guitar  
making will be in peril if problematic aspects of environmental law  
are not resolved.

Those of us who care about the craft that made the American guitar one  
of the most desirable instruments in the world are watching the Obama  
administration closely. And we have reason to be hopeful. After all,  
this is the president who, with his wife, shortly after taking office,  
gave Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, France’s first lady, a Gibson Hummingbird  
acoustic guitar as a gift of friendship.

Kathryn Marie Dudley is a professor of anthropology and American  
studies at Yale.