Illegally Logged Hardwood in DRC

Bloodwood that has not passed the “quality inspection”. In order to harvest the highest quality wood, Chinese merchants have taught the local lumberjacks a simple “quality test”: cut a small hole into the tree, extract a small piece of core, and dip it in a bottle of water. If it sinks immediately with no air bubbles, then the specimen can be considered dense with rich oils—the signs of good lumber—otherwise, the specimen will not receive the approval of merchants. Many trees in the forest are like this. Although they have not been chopped down, they still carry scars.
Pterocarpus tinctorius, or Mukula tree, is a rare and slow-growing hardwood unique to southern and central Africa. Mukula has been illegally logged and traded from Zambia and DRC to China for the last decade, feeding the increasing demand of "rosewood" in the Chinese market.