Years of unsustainable logging are leading to drastically reduced teak exports from Burma, according to new information presented to the International Union of Forest Research Organisations seminar on the species.
Delegates to the seminar, held in Kerala, India, heard that by 1998 two of the four grades of veneer logs exported from Burma were no longer available at depots in Yangon.
By 2000, third and fourth veneer grades were 1% and 10% respectively of the volumes available at the beginning of the 1990s.
Volumes of sawlogs fell across all catergories except grade four logs. New grades had to be created to accommodate the deterioration in quality.
