Is Agathis wood a sustainable resource?
Sometimes! Unfortunately, the best guitars are usually reckoned to be made, regardless of the type of wood, from trees of more than 200 years old. Although it is, of course, perfectly possible that national and private forest operations could provide renewable, plantation-grown or managed-forest timber grown on this sort of long-term cycle, in reality the main source for this sort of timber is likely to be primary forest – that is, old-growth forests being logged for the first time. There are Agathis plantations in many parts of the world and much of the Agathis timber on the world market is probably plantation-grown, but as with all tropical timbers, if you wish to be environmentally responsible then you should ALWAYS err on the side of caution and buy only wood that the supplier can prove is certified as coming from a sustainable timber source.
