SYDNEY, Oct. 7 (Xinhua) -- Australian sandalwood, one of the most valuable timbers in the world, is facing extinction in the wild, while the iconic outback tree is still being harvested in the state of Western Australia (WA).
Researchers from Charles Sturt University and Curtin University are urging the WA government to list sandalwood as an endangered species. After delving into more than 100 scientific papers, their study, published in the Rangeland Journal on Thursday, shows 175 years of commercial harvesting may have decreased the population of wild sandalwood by as much as 90 percent.
"The government is still allowing permits for hundreds of tons of the wood to be destructively harvested. They actually pulled the whole tree out of the ground. It's a really destructive process," one of the authors, Professor Kingsley Dixon from Curtin University told Xinhua.
Dixon said the sandalwood populations have been collapsing for decades from commercial harvesting, land clearing and fire, while this species is not recovering.
The study suggests there have been virtually no new trees emerging in most sandalwood populations for 60-100 years.
"Sandalwood trees live for hundreds of years, so it means they keep dropping seeds over very long periods. When you remove a tree, you're taking away hundreds of years of potential future seeding events, so it's a devastating effect," Dixon said.
Loss of seed dispersers is another reason for the lack of regeneration. Seed dispersers, such as burrowing bettongs (small marsupials), which went extinct across most of their range about the same time sandalwood stopped recruiting.
"Human behaviors changed all the animals in the landscape for over 120 years. The animals that would have dispersed and helped these germinated belong vanished from many areas," Dixon said.
Researchers said the WA government currently harvests old-growth sandalwood trees almost exclusively from the wild, where the oldest trees have the best oil quality. Plantations do exist, but they are not yet being fully utilized to replace wild-sourced timber.
"We urge the WA government to make that transition. Stop commercial harvesting immediately. Convert to plantations and provide transition investment for people to put commercial plantations in," Dixon said. Enditem