National Geographic: Cameroon’s embattled ebony trees get a lifeline—from guitar maker
The guitar industry has a spotty track record for sustainable wood sourcing. But one manufacturer is trying to help stave off deforestation.
Noël Nakere Dobo Nkouli finishes planting an ebony sapling in the Congo Basin forest of southeastern Cameroon. “These trees,” he says, “are our heritage.” PHOTOGRAPH BY TIM MCDONNELL
This story first appeared in National Geographic.
WIELDING A MACHETE, Noël Nakere Dobo Nkouli hacks a path through thick vines crowding the tropical forest outside his village in Kompia, in Cameroon’s rural southeast. Every few yards, he digs a shallow hole in the rich, red soil and plants the leafy sapling of an ebony tree, an iconic indigenous hardwood species with a jet-black interior that is prized for sculptures, piano keys, furniture accents, and stringed instrument fingerboards.
Since last year, Nkouli and his neighbors in a handful of other villages in the area have planted more than 5,000 ebony trees. The trees won’t be mature enough to harvest for a century, but Nkouli sees them as an investment in future generations at a time when the forests of central Africa are quickly disappearing under pressure from agriculture and logging.
Their work is part of an ambitious reforestation effort supported by an unlikely patron: the American guitar manufacturer who equips the likes of Taylor Swift and Jason Mraz and is among Africa’s biggest commercial consumers of ebony.