A leading distributor of teak furniture in the US is helping to eliminate illegal logging and improve the management of threatened forests by only sourcing timber from well-managed and certified forests.

Landscape Online carries a story about Westminster Teak which has joined with Nusa Hijau (the Indonesian Chapter of the Global Forest Trade Network, an initiative of World Wildlife Fund) to purchase timber from Perum Perhutani, the government-managed plantation that promotes biodiversity and the livelihoods of the people that depend on them.

Agroforestry is incorporated into the Perum Perhutani system so that local people are able to farm other crops among rows of planted teak trees. This way, they earn additional income while the teak trees are growing.

Teak was introduced to Indonesia by the Dutch and the industry is now managed by the Indonesian government, with close to 5 million acres of forests.

Read the full story: Rain Forest Preservation and Teak Wood