"Rimu is not the only option for furniture making and its presence or absence from the marketplace should not be used as an excuse to stall the end of Timberlands' native forest logging," Native Forest Action spokesperson Dean Baigent-Mercer said today.

"NZ's furniture industry does not and should not rely on native timber. Because the timber markets in recent years have been flooded with Timberlands' cheap rimu sacrificed from Buller forests other specialist timbers that have been planted haven't had markets. The time is right to switch to these plantations for decorative furniture."

"Rimu is not the only option for furniture making - there are, and have been for years, many alternatives to rimu. Using rimu costs our forests. It is a colonial idea to keep logging native rainforests when many environmentally acceptable alternatives are available. Most people couldn't discriminate rimu from macrocarpa or matai from black walnut. It is merely the name that sells rimu, not because it is essential as a furniture making timber."

"The pro-native logging argument, that if furniture manufacturers can't use rimu, they will switch to clearfelled tropical timbers, is not correct. Specialty timbers such as douglas fir, macrocarpa, eucalyptus, Lawson's cupress, black walnut and of course pinus radiata are ready for use. Utilising these plantations eliminates any reliance on imported rainforest timbers. A company in Tauranga even uses new technology to stain pine to look the spitting image of beech and rimu".

"As a living tree, a rimu can survive for several hundred years providing habitat for threatened birds, past the date a logger would choose to cut it down. However, as fashion furniture, rimu barely makes it past twenty years. With fickle changes in fashion, today's rimu table is tomorrow's landfill material. This is not a sustainable attitude to rainforest resource use".

"If you buy rimu, you are consenting to unnecessary native rainforest destruction".

ENDS

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