This topic has arisen in different threads, but I thought it deserved a thread of its own, since it is so important to musical instrument makers and owners alike.
I just found this thread - thank you very much, Turnaround, for bringing this up and explaining it so well. And the Taylor video should be watched by
everyone who plays any guitar - he explains it very well and with a conscience, too.
It obviously makes some people here uncomfortable, but every purchase we make casts a vote for what's behind it. We like to hide behind things like free choice, the market, decisions made long ago, etc., but when we buy something, we help fund every aspect of how it was made. And even when we buy used goods, we help create and support the market value of what is in them, which has a very real effect on the production and sales of raw materials.
In short, we all share responsibility for this. We all share responsibility for the entire world. Who wants to think about that? No one, it's uncomfortable. But it's truth.
I went through a time when I looked at the different types of woods being used in newer instruments and thought, "wow, glad I got my old bass when I did". But as time passes, I look at my guitars and wonder what stories are behind some of their materials. That ebony fingerboard on my old Godin fretless, on my old Ovation Magnum - where did they come from? How about the rosewood on my 1980 Yamaha? My 1995 Music Man Sterling? or even the "plain" woods, like the maples and alders - what produced those, at different times? And then there are the metals used in the electronics of my basses, amps, pedals...
It's good for thought. We fetishize things like our guitars, just as people do with furs, ivory goods, endangered animals stuffed and mounted in their living rooms, etc. Doesn't mean guitars are bad, it just means that everything is connected.
One more note: wanted to counter a mention of Fish & Wildlife personnel as goons early on in this thread. That may have been the experience of a specific person, but my dad was a career F&W biologist (in an area completely unrelated to this), and everyone I've ever known who worked for them was completely serious about their work, responsible, and doing it for the right reasons. There are abusers in every field of human endeavor, but I always hate to hear people extending that to smear all government employees (that wasn't the case here, but I've seen it elsewhere). My experience has been that the more profit involved in work, the more corruption.
But that's a whole other discussion. Thanks for bringing up the legal facts, and for the opportunity to discuss ethics in an area that too rarely considers it.
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