Bush smugglers vie for wooden gold, sandalwood Police have charged a man after $1.5m worth of sandalwood was illegally harvested and distributed in WA. LONG valued for its scent by perfume makers and worshippers at Indian temples, sandalwood is proving irresistible to another group: packs of smugglers roaming the Australian outback. The lure is a surge in prices for sandalwood - an ingredient used in making incense sticks, cosmetics and aromatherapy oils - as demand in major consuming countries such as India and China grows. Illegal logging is rising and product makers are looking elsewhere, including Australia, for sources of a tree some call "wooden gold" for its high value, authorities and industry experts say. Australian authorities tell of illegal loggers in SUVs and small trucks who cut down the small, bushlike sandalwood trees with chainsaws before making their escapes. In their haste, they leave roots and stumps behind, even though these can also can be worth hundreds of dollars. "Most of the criminal activity involves in-and-out, smash-and-grab-type operations," said Ian Kealley, a regional manager of Western Australia's Department of Parks and Wildlife. But there have been operations where they've used machines - small Bobcats ripping trees out of the ground. Western Australian authorities have made several seizures and arrests this year as they attempt to clamp down on the poaching. In the latest, police searching three properties in the suburbs of the state capital of Perth last month found 200 metric tons of what they said was illegally harvested sandalwood. The haul's estimated commercial value of $1.5 million makes it the state's biggest single seizure to date. Australia ships about 2,000 metric tons of legally harvested wood each year worth $30 million. Legal plantations have attracted investment from Middle Eastern sovereign-wealth funds and U.S. pension funds, as global demand for Australian sandalwood rises. The illegal logging has become so prevalent that Western Australia's lawmakers are deliberating harsher penalties and boosting resources to prosecute poachers in a continuing inquiry. Prices for top-quality Indian sandalwood, which has a high content of fragrant oil, rose to more than $114,000 a metric ton in May from just over $5,000 a decade earlier, according to the most recent data from Australian supplier TFS Corp. Native Australian sandalwood, scattered across Australia's semi-arid hinterland, isn't as valuable, though a metric ton sells for $15,000 - more than twice the price of copper - up from $3,000 a decade earlier. Sandalwood exports from Australia date back to 1844, before the country's first gold rush and the modern-day boom in iron-ore mining. It now accounts for around 40 per cent of global supply. But officials say the price increase is creating a black market worth millions of dollars, with logs shipped vast distances by road across Australia and concealed on boats headed to Asia for use in religious rites, traditional medicines and even a popular breath freshener in India. These illegal sales are cutting into the prices legitimate suppliers can charge, says Tim Coakley, executive chairman of Wescorp Holdings, which processes and markets about 2,500 metric tons a year of wild sandalwood as agent for the state's Forest Products Commission. "You get this enormous amount of wood being dumped in Asia, which blows the long-established marketing structure apart," said Mr. Coakley. Companies harvesting sandalwood legally are taking measures to combat the poachers. Perth-based TFS says it is building fences and installing cameras around its plantations in Western Australia's Ord River region. "Poaching is a bigger industry than people imagine," said Frank Wilson, chief executive of TFS. Police say small-scale poaching has been taking place in Western Australia for more than a decade, but now they suspect criminal gangs have been lured by the high prices. Up to 800 metric tons a year of Australian sandalwood are now being pillaged from conservation reserves, private land and even the sides of roads, authorities say. Mr. Coakley said the authorities underestimate the impact of poaching activity because they only tally logs - the more valuable sections of sandalwood trees that contain the so-called heartwood. The logs are only 30 per cent of the tree, so you are talking about 2,500 metric tons as either illegally harvested or left in the bush to rot. In October 2012, forestry officials travelled to a remote part of Western Australia's dusty Goldfields region to survey trees ahead of a legal harvest. What they found instead were scores of stumps, trees with missing limbs and multiple tyre tracks. "It was very brazen," said Benjamin Sawyer, manager of sandalwood for the Forest Products Commission. They'd used flagging tape on the road to show people how to get in and out of the area. A few months before that, police attending to a truck that had jackknifed on a highway near the southern coastal township of Eucla found it contained a stash of sandalwood logs. When authorities returned the next day, the truck remained but the illicit cargo had gone. Before the seizure last month, according to Western Australia's Department of Parks and Wildlife, the state had seized around 170 tons of illegally harvested native sandalwood worth around $2.5 million since 2011 in more than 20 separate busts. Sandalwood poaching is now grouped alongside illegal exports of Western Australian rare reptiles and birds as the biggest priority for Parks and Wildlife rangers. Still, Western Australia's size - a quarter the size of the U.S. - makes tracking and apprehending criminal activity tough. Also, the fines for illegal sandalwood harvest and law-enforcement powers aren't sufficient to fight such a lucrative crime, some police, lawmakers and wildlife officials say. Without an overhaul, including tougher sentences for the specific crime, sandalwood poaching is likely "to be an industry of choice for organised criminals, now and into the next decade," Murray Smalpage, regional police commander of Western Australia, told a state parliamentary inquiry.