Forest crime files
Publication date: June 2002
Summary
The redevelopment of the Queen's Gallery at Buckingham Palace has just been completed. The Gallery, part of a £20 million Jubilee project, was designed by architects John Simpson & Partners and is the most significant addition to Buckingham Palace in 150 years. Incredibly, completely uncertified tropical timber has been used in the building. The use of such timber is fuelling the destruction of ancient forests in the Brazilian Amazon and in Central and West Africa.
Prince Phillip, the President Emeritus of World Wide Fund for Nature has called for commercial forestry operations to be certified by the Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC). This has been completely ignored in the Queens Gallery, despite contractual obligations that all tropical timber used in the building should be certified. In at least one case the supplier has been unable even to identify from which country tropical timber was sourced. The Queen's Gallery has been renovated to mark the jubilee celebrations. Meanwhile, scientists warn that chimpanzees and gorillas, dependent on the forests of Central and West Africa, will disappear from the wild in the next 50 years if current rates of forest destruction continue.
