EDITOR’S NOTE: The New York Times published a report today titled “Rainforests Being Cleared to Build Your RV.” The report presumably was instigated by a press release, also received by RVBusiness, which is included below following the excerpt of The New York Times report. The press release names several RV companies.
American demand for tropical wood that is used in motorhomes, conservationists say, is accelerating the disappearance of some of the world’s largest forests., according to a report by The New York Times.
In recent years, tens of thousands of acres of forest have been razed in Indonesian Borneo, including this logging operation in November. Word spread fast that heavy machinery had arrived in the ancient rainforest near the Indonesian village of Sungai Mata-Mata, an expanse on the western edge of the island of Borneo that is home to orangutans, clouded leopards and sun bears.
Flouting the law, the excavators began digging trenches to drain the area’s protected wetlands. Then came the logging crews, which cut down woodlands the size of more than 2,800 football fields, in just a few days.
It was an apocalyptic sight, said Samsidar, a regional forestry official who goes by one name, recalling the devastation he encountered two years ago. “The trees had turned into piles of wood.”
Not just any kind of wood, though. The trees were meranti, a species found mostly in Indonesia and other parts of Southeast Asia, and their tropical hardwood is of particular interest to one industry in the United States: manufacturers of motor homes.
Click here to read the full report by The New York Times.
(Press Release) Unhappy Campers: How America’s RV industry is Destroying Indonesia’s Rainforests
A months-long investigation by London-based non-profit Earthsight and Indonesian environmental group Auriga Nusantara has revealed that some of America’s favourite RVs are built from the destruction of pristine rainforests on the other side of the world, according to a release from Earthsight, a UK-based non-profit organisation that uses in-depth investigations to expose environmental and social crime, injustice and the links to global consumption, and Auriga Nusantara, a data-driven environmental advocacy group in Indonesia that works to end deforestation in the country.
Sheets of tropical ‘lauan’ plywood are used in the walls, floors and ceilings of RVs made by brands like Jayco and Winnebago. The report, Unhappy Campers, reveals that the RV industry is now by far the biggest consumer of tropical wood in the US, and much of this comes from wholesale clearance of tropical rainforest in Indonesia – the most unsustainable wood in the world.
Earthsight and Auriga spent months investigating the trade, first visiting a remote corner of Borneo where vast swathes of orangutan habitat are being cleared to make way for a plantation of fast-growing timber. Where lush forests recently stood, they found barren expanses of bare earth, with heavy machinery at work transporting freshly-cut logs.
Members of local Indigenous communities claim that the clearance has disrupted their access to forest resources, which they rely on for their livelihoods, and that communication with, and compensation from PT Indosubur Sukses Makmur, the company concerned, has been minimal.
The NGOs then used shipment records and company reports to piece together where the wood from the felled trees was headed. They identified an Indonesian plywood company, PT Kayu Lapis Asli Murni (PT KLAM), which in 2024 sourced 87 per cent of its tropical timber from rainforest clearance in the area Earthsight/Auriga visited. Fifty percent of this company’s exports in 2024 were to two US firms, MJB Wood and Tumac Lumber. MJB Wood’s two other Indonesian suppliers of lauan are also buying wood from deforestation in Borneo.
MJB Wood is the main supplier of lauan plywood to the bestselling RV brand Jayco. Company reports show that both MJB Wood and Tumac Lumber have supplied Patrick Industries, a maker of RV parts whose customers include THOR Industries (which owns Jayco), Forest River and Winnebago.
While it is impossible to say with certainty that a particular vehicle or production line is using deforestation wood from Indonesia, these figures mean it is almost certain that the Indonesian lauan plywood imported by MJB Wood and Tumac Lumber from PT KLAM and other Indonesian suppliers and sold on to customers in the RV industry includes wood from deforestation in Borneo.
The industry is well aware of the environmental impacts of lauan, and the companies importing and using the wood claim in public that sustainability is at the core of their business. But investigators found that more sustainable wood is easily available, as lauan logs from forests certified as sustainably managed by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) are plentiful in Indonesia. Earthsight calculates that if RV makers used only FSC-certified lauan, the cost of producing the average RV would rise by at most $20. Yet the RV industry refuses to pay even that paltry price.
Earthsight and Auriga wrote to all the companies named for comment ahead of the report’s release. None had replied at the time of publication.
“Indonesia has already lost 23 million hectares, or 20 percent, of its rainforest since 1990, at an immense cost to our climate, ecosystems and Indigenous peoples,” said Timer Manurung, Chair of Auriga Nusantara. “The destruction has to stop. Companies in the United States and worldwide must take action to stop timber from deforestation in Indonesia entering their supply chains.”
“Nature-loving RV owners will be horrified to learn that their hobby risks destroying rainforests,” said Sam Lawson, Earthsight’s Director. “America’s RV giants need to get out of the 1980s and implement the kinds of minimum sustainability standards other US corporates have had in place for decades.”
