ROSEWOOD.

• Author: Riggs, Mike
• Position: COMMODITY

In 2017, an amendment to an international treaty threw American guitar makers into a panic. In order to stop the overharvesting of rosewood for use in Chinese furniture, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) was updated to impose permit requirements for all 183 treaty member states on all international movement of all products containing any amount of rosewood. Rosewood crossing borders without such a permit was now contraband.

U.S. guitar manufacturers, whose product lines prior to this often contained small amounts of the wood (which instrument makers love for its natural oils, stunning dark grain, and historical importance), worried about the legality of shipping instruments to countries where it had been perfectly fine to do so just months before. Retailers, buyers, and traveling musicians now had to fret about guitars being seized in global transit.

The answer to these concerns, CITES advocates said, was simple: Just get the permit. But the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was inundated with CITES...