‘Tropical Salvage at Home’ Photo Contest

May 11^th-June 30^th, 2013

Tropical Salvage is humbled to have outfitted so many homes with our furniture during the last fifteen years. The collection has evolved over time, with many beloved “vintage” pieces still at home across Portland and the United States. And since every piece is unique, given our various salvaging methods and locations, Indonesia’s wealth of workable, salvageable species, and our commitment to highlighting the natural beauty of the wood, we would love and appreciate the opportunity to see how you’ve welcomed Tropical Salvage into your home.

For this photo contest, we are looking for original and striking images of ‘Tropical Salvage at Home’. For example, the shot of founder Tim O’Brien’s live-edge dining table and Janoko Chairs. You may submit as many photos of ‘Tropical Salvage at Home’ as you wish. Click the link for complete Participant Guidelines to the contest.

Entries accepted through June 11th, 2013.

First Place wins their choice of Equilibrium Cabinet, Cabin Side Table, Gili Meno Chest, or Solidarity Table. Tropical Salvage will ship the prize to the winner anywhere in the United States, if the winner is not local to our Portland headquarters.

First Runner-up wins a $50 gift certificate to Tropical Salvage in Portland, OR.

Thanks again for your fondness of Tropical Salvage furniture and for welcoming us into your home for this special photo contest. We can’t wait to see your photos!

By Christina Williams

Tropical Salvage, a furniture company focused on recycling tropical wood, is getting ready to move into a giant warehouse space in a bid to remake its business from behind-the-scenes supplier to story-telling retailer.

The 20,000-square-foot space, tucked into the light industrial neighborhood at Northwest 22nd Avenue and York Street, will be the new home of a Tropical Salvage showroom, displayed along with pictures to tell the story of where the wood came from.

In part, the shift is one of necessity.

“We’ve got to adjust our business model,” said Tim O’Brien, owner of 15-year-old Portland-based Tropical Salvage.

The company, which salvages and reclaims tropical wood in partnership with other organizations, has been a longtime supplier to other retailers, including Ten Thousand Villages. But when the recession hit, demand dropped along with Tropical Salvage sales…

Read the rest of the article and view a slideshow of photos at Sustainable Business Oregon.

PORTLAND, OR – September 17, 2012 – In support of its mission, Tropical Salvage is moving into a new, expanded space. The new location, 2233 NW York Street in Portland, OR, will serve as the company’s U.S. headquarters, warehouse, and retail and education destination. The move coincides with the launch of a new website and receipt of a new container of company’s handmade, fair trade, salvaged wood furniture.

2008

On July 19, 2008 The Jepara Forest Conservancy (JFC) entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with Perum Perhutani (PP), Indonesia’s state-owned forestry management company, to create, implement and manage, for at least thirty years, a Technical Plan for Reforestation Implementation (Rancangan Teknik Pelaksanaan Reboisasi-RTPR) on 260 hectares of Mount Muria, located in north central Java.

In September, 2008, the Jepara Forest Conservancy enabled four young men from villages near the Muria forest restoration site to attend the Learning Farm’s organic agro-forestry program, located near Bogor, in west Java. They returned to the community in January to lead in planning and implementing the project’s planting and cultivation schedule.

On December 6, 2008 a Jepara Forest Conservancy inaugural ceremony occurred on Mount Muria to recognize and celebrate the Jepara Forest Conservancy’s first forest restoration project. The ceremony occurred in the village Kunir, located on the northwest slope of Mount Muria in Central Java Province, about fifty miles from Tropical Salvage’s principal production facility. Approximately five-hundred people attended the ceremony. Among those in attendance were Indonesian government administrators working in Central Java Province, mayors from both the cities Jepara and Semarang, Central Java’s Director of Forestry, Tropical Salvage’s founder, Tim O’Brien, the founders of the Jepara Forest Conservancy, Agus Rafiqkoh and Adi Sunaryo, and hundreds of people living near the forest restoration site.  A gamelan band accompanied the event with traditional music and several principal attendees issued statements in support of the project and emphasizing the necessity to modify land-use strategies to reverse trends of environmental destruction and related social instability. The ceremony also initiated a schedule to plant thirty thousand tree seedlings through December.

2009

On April 15, 2009 soil samples from the JFC site were sent for analysis to the Seameo Biotrop Services Laboratory in Bogor, Java. From the analysis we will learn the soil’s composition at different parts of the site and to what degree those areas are suited to growing coffee, cacao and other productive crops scheduled for planting. We will learn more about what tree species native to central Java are likely to thrive at the site. We also want to learn what deficiencies the soil might have and, if it has any, what organic strategies we might apply to improve on them. Additionally, we want to know if evidence of chemical pesticides and herbicides exists in the soil and, if so, how pronounced they are and what organic strategies might be applied to reduce them. As JFC will seek organic certification for its products, it’s important that chemicals that might have accumulated in the soil be characterized and quantified.

 On April 25, 2009 the Jepara Forest Conservancy purchased 21 “Etawa” goats to initiate a herd. Milk from Etawa goats has high nutritional value and is favored in parts of Southeast Asia, including Malaysia and Brunei, where it fetches a high price. Also, the goats’ skin is regarded by leather workers as a high-grade material and is sought after. The goats’ diet is provided by leaves and grasses that are native to and plentiful on Mount Muria. Also, they’ll be raised without antibiotics and without chemical hormones that unnaturally hasten or enhance growth. Goat manure will figure importantly into blends of organic fertilizers for trees and plants cultivated at the site. The goat project is one of many JFC has planned to bring sustainable, eco-positive jobs to people living around the forest restoration site. Promising discussions with prospective buyers of products deriving from the goats are already underway.

2010

In February 2010, the Jepara Forest Conservancy enlisted Dr. Iwan Tjitradjaja, chair of the anthropology department at the University of Indonesia, to conduct a social-cultural survey among the people who live in Kunir, a village located at the edge of the Jepara Forest Conservancy forest restoration project whose community the project directly benefits. The survey was structured to learn the community’s traditional practices and current needs and aspirations so that activities initiated by the Jepara Forest Conservancy might smoothly and efficiently engage and integrate with the community. Since the survey was initiated, Dr. Tjitradjaja has visited the JFC site several times and a colleague, Kartika Pamungkas (Tika), has spent nearly a month living in Kunir, getting to know its people and observing their routines. Through the survey, which is on-going, Dr. Tjitradjaja and Tika have learned a great deal about Kunir. They learned that a strong tradition of practicing gamelan music existed until recently, when challenging economic pressures forced most of the people who owned gamelan instruments to sell them. Traditions of Wayang kulit (shadow puppet) performances and studying and practicing pensilat (an Indonesian martial art) were strong until recent years – perhaps losing favor among a younger generation whose attention is increasingly drawn to the ever-multiplying attractions and distractions of a wired world.

Additionally, Dr. Tjitradjaja and Tika learned many details about how the community’s historically abundant forest resources became degraded. For generations, primary forests surrounding Kunir provided the community with important food and medicinal products, as well as raw materials for construction and fabrication purposes. Also importantly, for generations the forest’s biological diversity offered a rich tableau of experiences that nourished strong cultural identification. When former president Suharto lost power in 1998, many communities reacted to his thirty-two year iron-fisted reign with anarchic autonomy. One expression of this country-wide, social and economic upheaval was a sharp surge in thefts of trees from Indonesia’s mature forests. Forests that were protected by legal mandate went up for grabs. Much of Mount Muria’s forestlands, including the area where the JFC site is located, were targets of this exploitation.

Today, then, the need among Mount Muria’s communities, and the guiding theme of the Jepara Forest Conservancy’s work, is market-oriented restoration, or restoration development.

Dr. Tjitradjaja’s and Tika’s work has proved extremely important in clarifying and strengthening communication between the Jepara Forest Conservancy, the site community and Perum Perhutani, Java’s government-sanctioned forestry management company. Dr. Tjitradaja and Tika have clearly communicated to the site community and Perum Perhutani details of on-going and planned JFC restoration development projects. As Perum Perhutani is a critically important partner in the project’s development, Dr. T and Tika have opened the door widely to cooperation. JFC’s success will be Perum Perhutani’s success – adding positively to PP’s reputation and to establishing, over the long term, sustainable, conservation-supportive revenue streams that benefit all.

Dr Tjitradjaja’s and Tika’s work has also been effective in emphasizing to people living in Kunir that they are the paramount stakeholder in all JFC work, that their needs and aspirations are central to shaping JFC projects.

Dr. Tjitradjaja and Tika have observed broad-based support and enthusiasm in the site community for the Jepara Forest Conservancy, as well as broad-based need for its projects. In fact, their survey work assesses it is very appropriate to expand the restoration project boundaries from 36 hectares to 700 hectares in order for the broader Mount Muria community to participate in and benefit from restoration development activities. Furthermore, expansion of forest restoration boundaries will allow the establishment of a Heritage Species Forest Park that is large enough to benefit from a set of government support mechanisms and funding streams accorded to Indonesian forest conservation and restoration sites whose size exceeds 200 hectares. JFC’s current size of 36 hectares is part of a larger 700 hectare area of officially recognized “Protected Forest.” Yet, the legal Protected Forest status of the land has not been duly supported and today government does not possess the financial capacity to restore the land. The logic of expanding the JFC site to 700 hectares derives from this circumstance and, also, from a belief that the way forward to restorative, sustainable and productive land-use is a collaborative one that combines the needs of a community with government’s administrative support, academia’s knowledge and expertise in the sciences, NGOs’ seed-funding and businesses’ access to market networks. In collaboration, then, Dr. Tjitradjaja, Dr. Greg Hill, Dr. Eric Jones and Tim O’Brien are in the process of creating a document that proposes this expansion.

2011

In March 2011, Tim O’Brien, the founder of Tropical Salvage and a facilitator for the Jepara Forest Conservancy, visited Jepara and the JFC forest restoration site on Mount Muria. JFC leaders, Sabtono and Paisan, are currently focused on coordinating two projects. One is to create a native plant and tree nursery in their village, Kunir, which is located near the JFC restoration site. Previously, they acquired tree seedlings to reforest the restoration site from a nursery controlled by Perum Perhutani , the government forestry company that administrates most of the forest land in Java. The majority of seedlings at the government nurseries are not native species. They are mainly “productive species” such as sengon and acacia – which are favored for their applications in the pulp and paper industries, or rubber and durian seedlings. In other words, the government nursery provides capacity to create mono-crop plantations that depend on and assist in fueling commodity agricultural markets. Using land to preserve or restore a traditional ecological profile is not a common practice in Java, the world’s most populous island. The Jepara Forest Conservancy believes an adjustment to a mixed-use perspective on land use is vital to enable a future for the local community that that will address food security, respect for traditional cultural values and routine access to clean water. JFC seeks to establish a forest garden, or “analog forest” whose biodiversity will provide traditional foods and medicines to local communities, as well as provide micro-habitats for various native fauna. The forest will also protect the watershed, stabilize soil on Mount Muria’s steep slopes and store carbon. The forest’s understory can include a range of productive species to sell in local and export markets such as spices, coffee, bamboo and fruits.

 On-going Jepara Forest Conservancy Projects

 1)    JFC continues planting native tree species. Dr. Tjitradjaja suggested that the local school might participate in a “heritage species” seed-collection contest sponsored by JFC.

 2)    Introduced in 2009 through a $5000 grant from JFC, Kunir’s herd of etawah goats has increased, through successful breeding, to 52 – from an original herd of 32. (Two goats have died.) Their diet consists of leaves and grasses that grow naturally and are plentiful around the village. Agus Rofiqkoh, a JFC founder and administrator, has contracted two specialists in breeding and managing etawah goats, Pak Abdulah Piadi and Pak Mialah, to assist and advise goat-owners living in Kunir. Pak Dul and Pak Mialah visit Kunir once a month.  Their work includes demonstrations on how to milk etawah goats and how to safely use and store their milk. Pak Agus projects that Kunir goat-owners will begin milking their herd in March or April, 2011. Presently, the price of etawah goat milk fetches a price in the marketplace nearly three times higher than the price of cow’s milk. JFC envisions increasing the goatherd, involving other villages in the project, and establishing a milk collection cooperative and cheese production facility.

3)    Dr. Tjitradjaja and Tika continue their work surveying Kunir’s social and cultural profiles and providing a clear voice to the community for JFC’s project objectives. If the Heritage Species Forest Park receives permission to expand its size to 700 hectares, it will be extremely important that Dr. T’s and Tika’s survey work be expanded to include work in Sumanding, a village located at the edge of the proposed expanded Forest Park.

4)    Assisted by Dr. Tjitradjaja and Tika, a biogas development project was initiated by Sabtono, the only teacher working in Kunir’s small grade school, and the Director of LMDH’s (Foundation for Forest Villages) chapter in Kunir. More than half of the 316 families living in Jian District, a part of Kunir where JFC’s work is currently focused, raise cows. The cows are commonly confined to pens in the owners’ yards. Use of cow manure for fertilizer is not common in the area, so cow waste accumulates and creates unsanitary conditions. However, cow manure can provide raw material for biogas production. Biogas technology will turn presently under-utilized cow manure into fuel for cooking stoves. Sabtono submitted a biogas development grant proposal to the Global Environment Facility Small Grant Program. He received $12,000.00 from GEF SGP.

 5)    Dr. Greg Hill and Tim O’Brien are working to identify varieties of coffees and spices which are known to grow well in Central Java at elevations consistent with the JFC site and for which ready market demand exists in the U.S. Organic cultivation of coffee and spices is a planned part of the forest park’s understory.

6)    JFC is working with Tropical Salvage to identify uses of kapok in products for export. Kapok is a fluffy cream-colored fiber found in seedpods of the randu tree (Ceiba pentandra) which grows commonly in and around the JFC site. The fiber is a mix of lignin and cellulose. It is commonly used in Indonesia as stuffing for pillows, cushions and mattresses. Tropical Salvage has used kapok to create seat cushions and occasional cushions. It plans to submit an order to cushion makers in Kunir after it has introduced product samples at The Las Vegas Market trade show in January, 2011.

 7)    JFC funded the acquisition of a solar oven and “Rocket Stove” to enable Kunir to experiment with their use. Tim O’Brien took them to Jepara during his visit to Indonesia in August, 2010. A Rocket Stove is an innovative, fuel-efficient stove design that significantly reduces smoke, thereby reducing health hazards from smoke inhalation and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Its fuel efficiency also reduces the frequency of firewood collection. Agus Rofiqkoh will discuss the stoves with Sabtono, Paisan and Perwanto, village leaders in Kunir who assess and guide JFC projects. If they judge a need and/or desire for the stoves exists among Kunir residents, then JFC will coordinate acquiring more of them – perhaps administering a trade of stoves for tree-plantings.

Planned Jepara Forest Conservancy Projects

1)    JFC will design a schedule to collect goat manure from goat-owners. The manure will be a main component for producing organic fertilizer. As goat manure isn’t easily applicable to biogas production, all of it that is generated from the goat project can be contributed to producing organic fertilizer. The fertilizer will be used in cultivation at the Heritage Species Forest Park.

2)    JFC plans to contract a hydrologist to map the site’s watershed in order to understand how it might be improved through forest restoration strategies and, also, to learn if it is possible to exploit it in a way that does not disadvantage downstream communities, to create a natural spring water product for the marketplace.

3)    JFC plans to study the market demand for nilam oil (derived from P. Heyneaus) and assess costs and capacity for its production at the JFC site. Nilam oil is aromatic and routinely used in the cosmetic industry. The plant is a perennial and grows in forest under-stories.

4)    JFC will survey the site community to learn what native tree species have a reputation for enabling the production of high-quality honey.  Identified species will be included in the Heritage Species Forest Park. (Pollen from the Randu blossom, for example, is known to contribute to high quality honey.)

5)    Drs. Iwan Tjitradjaja, Eric Jones and Greg Hill plan to work with Pak Sabtono to create an environmental education curriculum for Kunir school children that addresses site-specific challenges and opportunities.

6)    Dr. Eric Jones has proposed to conduct a study of Kunir’s medical facilities to learn if they are answering the community’s needs. This might occur as a part of the survey work being done by Dr. Tjitradjaja and Tika Pamungkas.

7)    Dr. Tjitradjaja and Tika Pamungkas advised that development of eco-tourism facilities will be an important component of an expanded JFC restoration site. The proposal to expand the site to 700 hectares will include this component.

PORTLAND, OR., November 2, 2011 – Tropical Salvage was recently granted an exclusive permit to salvage wood in parts of Indonesian Borneo (Kalimantan) and export products built from salvaged wood. Awarded by the Indonesian government, the permit is an important step in Tropical Salvage’s plan to create conservation-supportive jobs, source extraordinary woods, and raise consciousness about protecting Borneo’s remaining peat forests. The permit is signed by the Provincial Director of Forestry, the Provincial Bureau of Trade, South Central Kalimantan’s Chief of Police, the Provincial Office of Social Welfare, and the Provincial Office of Environmental Protection.

Currently, logging and burning primary tropical forests accounts for approximately 25% of human-generated carbon emissions, and explains Indonesia’s rank as the world’s third highest emitter of carbon. Borneo’s peat forests are the earth’s richest forest-based carbon sinks. Additionally, the island’s old-growth peat forests host one of the world’s most bio-diverse populations of plants and animals. Due to rampant forest destruction driven by mining, land conversion, and illegal logging, the rate of species extinction in Borneo is among the fastest on the planet.

Successful implementation of a plan to conserve Borneo’s remaining peat forests will depend critically on receiving support from communities living in and near forests targeted for conservation. Attracting local support for conservation is dependent on generating sustainable livelihoods for local communities. Tropical Salvage, founded on salvaging wood and crafting it into home furnishings to sell in the international marketplace, will immediately create a sustainable, scalable supply of local jobs. Growing an eco-industry based on Borneo’s vast resource of salvageable woods will support conservation of the island’s peat forest ecosystems, thus safeguarding biodiversity, protecting natural water systems, and retaining carbon.

By Rhett A. Butler, mongabay.com

Over the past twenty years Indonesia lost more than 24 million hectares of forest, an area larger than the U.K. Much of the deforestation was driven by logging for overseas markets. According to the World Bank, a substantial proportion of this logging was illegal.

While deforestation rates have dipped since the late 1990s, illegal logging remains a problem in Indonesia. In fact it is seen as one of the biggest challenges for Indonesia in meeting the greenhouse gas reductions targets pledged by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono: in 2009 the Indonesian President pledged to unilaterally cut the country’s emissions 26 percent from a projected 2020 baseline.

Curtailing illegal logging may seem relatively simple: hire more forestry police to conduct more patrols, strengthen fines, prosecute cases, and implement better tracking systems for legitimate timber. But at the root of the problem of illegal logging is something bigger: Indonesia’s land policy. The bulk of Indonesia’s forest is owned by the state, which historically has doled out large concessions — often tens of thousands of hectares in extent — to logging companies. Local communities mostly lose out, leaving some to seek opportunities from illicit timber harvesting. Without clear ownership rights to land, communities have little incentive to reject illegal logging or manage forests for the long-term. The model — which has contributed to the abandonment of traditional land stewardship in many areas — has driven large-scale devastation of Indonesia’s rich forest ecosystems.

Can the tide be turned? There are signs it can. Indonesia is beginning to see a shift back toward traditional models of forest management in some areas. Where it is happening, forests are recovering. For example “people’s forests” in Java are, for the first time in generations, regrowing. Given a stake in forest ownership, communities in Java have an interest in reforestation for timber production and other benefits afforded by forests.

Telapak, a membership organization with offices on several Indonesian islands, understands the issue well. It is pushing community logging as the “new” forest management regime in Indonesia. Telapak sees community forest management as a way to combat illegal logging while creating sustainable livelihoods. Telapak’s interest in community logging emerged out of its advocacy and campaigning work against illegal logging… read the full article.

We are often asked if we use teak wood to build our furniture. We source teak wood from deconstruction salvage projects in Java. The teak structures we salvage – houses, schools, bridges and boats –are aged 70–200 years. Teak wood that was used to build those structures was sourced from mature trees, when stocks of old–growth teak from Indonesia’s many vast teak plantations were plentiful. In former times, mature trees were commonly older than 100 years, although any tree older than forty or fifty years is considered mature. Construction–grade teak to build houses and boats is sourced from mature trees, as mature trees have tighter grain, higher concentrations of oil and more strongly express teak’s natural resistance to many insects and fungi. While these natural properties that are desirable to woodworkers derive from the soil conditions and climate in which trees are grown, and while there is debate about which combination of soil and climate produces trees most desirable to industry, there is consensus agreement that mature teak provides material of higher integrity than immature teak.

Indonesia’s teak plantations account for about one–third of the world’s existing teak plantations. However, today Indonesia possesses practically no stocks of mature teak trees. This is due to rampant theft and mismanagement of the country’s state –owned teak plantations during the chaotic years following former President Suharto’s loss of power in 1998: between 1998 and 2005, nearly all of Indonesia’s mature plantation teak trees – a historically high–value material – were pillaged and sold in both domestic and international markets for a fraction of their value. During that time, teak furniture produced in Indonesia using old growth wood flooded the market, and was priced ridiculously low. Additionally, there were not enough seasoned and skilled craftsmen to answer a suddenly expanded need for labor; so, a lot of poorly made furniture built from amazing material, then, filled containers headed to destinations around the world.

Being that Indonesia’s plantation stock of mature teak trees is largely exhausted for the present, new teak furniture currently produced in Indonesia is built using immature trees, usually no older than fifteen or twenty years. Immature teak is a quite different and less desirable material than mature teak. At the same time, the price of this low grade teak wood has increased sharply beyond the cost of teak during the days when old trees could be stolen with impunity from state–owned plantations. Additionally, costs for other production materials, such as epoxy, finishing solutions and brass fixtures, has soared in recent years. Labor time applied to building furniture has also increased because a lot more joinery is required to work with smaller dimensions of wood that come from smaller trees. Unless it is constructed using teak wood salvaged from old structures, teak furniture built in Indonesia has become an expensive product derived from wood inferior to what it can and should be.

The name, teak, though, is rich with mystique. People know the name, revere the reputation and thus demand to have it. However, at Tropical Salvage we have discovered that few people who demand teak know much about it. The Dutch East India Company began to establish Indonesia’s teak plantations during the seventeenth century. In time, they greatly succeeded at marketing teak to Europe and the United States as one of the world’s premiere woods for constructing buildings, boats and furniture. Teak is of course a fine wood, but hardly the only species of wood from Indonesia’s highly diverse forest stocks suitable to constructing buildings, boats and furniture. The Dutch strategized to make it seem so because they created and controlled Indonesia’s vast teak plantations, where teak grows faster than anywhere else in the world in tropical, alluvial, volcanically–enriched soils. The mystique of teak which the Dutch East India Company encouraged in the seventeenth century persists today. Viewed in realistic context, though, teak’s historical cultivation in plantations as an international commodity whose trade enriched colonial entities has rarely served the interests of social or environmental ethics. Applying brutishly narrow land –use policies provoked by the rudest commercial calculation, the Dutch East India Company displaced many native peoples from their ancestral lands and deprived vast ranges of land of its ancestral biodiversity.

Without intending to take anything away from teak’s considerable versatility and beauty, it cannot be ignored that its highly exclusive reputation was intentionally invented by the Dutch East India Company and other colonial entities settled in south and southeast Asia to increase their exploitative prospects. They succeeded at this strategy prodigiously.

Science, Economics, and REDD: Struggling for Balance

By Tim O’Brien

My friend Rezal Kusumaatmadja contacted me in July to ask if I could join him and some of his associates for a couple of days in the village Mendawai, located along the Katingan River in south central Kalimantan. The purpose of the gathering was to bring everyone in the group up to date on progress and challenges related to the Katingan Peat Conservation Project, as well as to give the group an opportunity to meet one another. The Katingan Project aims to create a forest –based carbon containment facility defined and guided by REDD (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and forest Destruction in the developing world) principles and methodology. Currently, nearly 25% of human –generated greenhouse gas emissions are caused by felling, burning and converting the world’s remaining primary forests. While areas surrounding the Katingan peat forest vividly express this statistic, Katingan is part of a growing strategy to reverse the trend. The Katingan project endeavors to transform conservation into a product that might offer strong competition against illegal logging and expansion of industrial agricultural plantations – whose practices cause enormous emissions of greenhouse gases, as well as destroying biodiversity, depleting and polluting watersheds and corroding native cultures. The central purpose of REDD projects is to protect primary forest lands in order to inventory and store carbon, mitigate climate change and thus orient conservation to the marketplace through its creation of salable carbon offset credits. Certified carbon–offset credits derived from REDD sites can be sold in a rapidly growing voluntary carbon off–set marketplace. Additionally, they will likely extend their market value into an evolving international compulsory off–set marketplace which will take effect after the Kyoto Protocal expires in 2012.

Very conservatively, the Katingan site, by simply remaining undisturbed primary forest land through intentional prevention of exploitative strategies that would otherwise claim it, generates one–million Verifiable Emission Reductions (one VER equals one ton of sequestered carbon) per year. One forest–based VER today sells for between six and ten dollars. Additionally, Katingan also recognizes and cultivates other benefits provided by the conservation site, such as protecting biodiversity and watersheds, availing ancestral non –timber forest products for local use and broader trade, and creating eco –positive jobs for the site community. Many rare, charismatic species gorgeously manifest Katingan’s biodiversity. Hornbills, proboscis monkeys, clouded leopards and approximately 1500 orangutans populate the site. It is reasonable to judge that Katingan’s carbon –offset credits are distinguished by the project’s intentional cultivation of other environmental and social benefits and thus more valuable in a marketplace increasingly driven to become part of the solution to unprecedented social and environmental challenges. But our intuition precedes the logic of this observation. From our wholesale trade of rare species and life –sustaining watersheds for nice floors and tables, to the Great Pacific Garbage Gyre whose surface area exceeds two Texas’, the industrial world’s broadly misguided approach to conveying progress is rivetingly clear.

Rezal is a founder and the Managing Director of Starling Resources, “a consulting firm specializing in the design of solutions and opportunities to positively address social, economic and environmental concerns.” The Katingan Peat Conservation Project is an important part of a multi –strategy solution to climate change. Its success as a market opportunity requires only that we recognize obvious, critically important and irreplaceable values in natural systems. The health and quality of life of future generations depend on our adjusting the terms of our interaction with nature.

Convergence in Borneo

My schedule allowed three days and two nights to visit Mendawai. Mendawai isn’t easy to get to. It doesn’t have an airport and no roads lead to it. Much travel in Kalimantan occurs in narrow long boats with high and jutting prows to cut through sometimes sizable waves that can occur on wide, wind–swept rivers.

I awoke at four in the morning in Ubud, Bali to drive an hour or more to the airport in Denpasar to catch a 6:30 am flight to Jakarta. Bali seems most expressive of its extravagant gods in the very early morning. Raucous with birdsong, mist undulating through deep river gorges, the storied island’s compelling architecture vivid and not yet obscured by a dense population scrabbling for a piece of the modern world, nor by a nearly ubiquitous fever of tourist traffic that compels much of the scrabble. In Jakarta I rendezvoused with Agus Rofiqkoh, the director of Tropical Salvage production who had flown from Semarang. We flew together to Palankaraya, in Kalimantan. We met Asep and Ganden on the flight, two members of Starling Resources GIS mapping crew. Our group of four was met at Palankaraya airport by two other Starling Resources crew members, Panci and Aba.

The Starling team is jolly, quipping company who added much convivial spirit to a long ride. They are also extremely informed about the ecosystems and social environments in which they work. We drove through late morning and part of the afternoon more than four hours to a boat dock along the Mentaia River. Our 500 kilometer drive through south central Kalimantan revealed that much land viewable from the road had been reduced, by narrow –interested exploitation of forest resources, to expanses of deserted, white, nutrient –depleted soil dotted with scrubby plants. Ganden explained that topsoil in tropical forests is thin because growing conditions are optimal and thus competition for nutrients is so crowded and sharp that soil cannot accumulate appreciably. Lose the forest and intense rainy seasons soon wash away topsoil and, without a steady fall of tree and plant litter to replenish nutrients, precipitate desert conditions. Driving through the heart of Borneo, forest lines were far away but sharp against reaches of white. The road was notably smooth and wide for rural Indonesia, doubtlessly to facilitate the world’s unrestrained grab at Kalimantan’s diminishing natural bounty.

We reached the boat dock along the Mentaia River during late afternoon. A couple of guys were removing racks of hand –sized, sere fish that had cured beneath the day’s sun. An antlered deer head leaned at a side, awaiting apportionment, perhaps, into materials for Chinese medicines and global handicrafts. Winds chopped waves to anxious white caps. Various sized long boats were arrayed without clear order around the dock. Those unable to gain position directly against the dock were tied to one that was, or to one that was tied to one that was.

Boarding the long boat was a little steadier than boarding a canoe. Once in, we sat on floor boards elevated above the boats bottom and any water that might get in. I created rough comfort by positioning my backpack against a cross –board that braced the boat’s gunnels. The river appeared to be about a quarter mile across. We set out toward the other shore in a long diagonal and against the tossed waves. Two sea eagles soared above us, regarding the river casually. A deafening uncovered motor spewed bluish smoke, overwhelmed conversation and propelled us forward. The boat driver steered a wheel at the front and soon spray from a blunt fray of wind, waves and prow advised us to unfurl a tarp. At dusk we reached the mouth of a narrow canal dredged through deep peat. It had been cut during recent years of unmanaged, indeed unbridled, logging to facilitate a flow of loggers and logs into and out of the area, first in great abundance and lately in stunning depletion.

Some ways along into the canal we stopped at a rude dock and disembarked to wait for smaller boats to take us the rest of the way, as the dry season had made the water very shallow in places. We waited for the boats at a spare food stall, or “warung, ” operated by a native Dayak family. We sipped sweet coffee and chewed delicious campfire –roasted salted peanuts; several of us tried to answer a bird’s lonely haunting inquiry at dusk. “Where am I, ” it seemed to wonder. The warung’s proprietor explained they had settled into the outpost some twenty years ago to take advantage of a logging boom. They followed the forest cut until the cost of gas to travel by boat to and from the cut –line grew too high to make economic sense. Currently, they are growing vegetables and fishing, and when possible selling food and drink at their warung and charging fees for boat rides. Some neighbors are trying to grow rubber trees.

It was dark when smaller boats arrived. We boarded two to a boat, Agus and I in the front boat. We motored into the dark, guided by a small but strong –beamed light affixed to the tip of the prow. As soon as we started, several bats flew into the light beam, hurtling just ahead of the fast boat, apparently taking advantage of the light’s allure to insects. Twice, a kind of night raptor tore from the canal’s bank and seized a bat made careless by its predation. An odor of burning, musty wood was thick through the canal. The canal’s centuries old peat walls, their dense entanglement of tree roots, appeared primeval and haunting in the glancing light.

When we rounded a bend the source of smoke became clear. Along the canal bank a long menacing sneer of red coals burned beneath the top soil: a peat fire. In a healthy peat forest that possesses dense tree canopy to retain moisture and regulate ground temperature, it’s very difficult for fire to spread. If you remove the forest’s protective canopy, then deep dead roots and exposed peat become a tinder in the dry season, awaiting combustion. Peat fires, often intentionally set to hasten conversion of land to agricultural purposes, usually oil palm, are why Indonesia is the world’s third largest emitter of carbon, behind China and the United States.

A climax to the bizarre wonderment of our ride through the canal occurred when an enormous wild boar charged into the river, in front of our boat, close enough to me so that I adjusted my position to a ready squat, in case of a collision. Water stirred from its commotion splashed me in the face. In the beam it appeared very riled, perhaps driven to fear or anxious confusion by the peat fires. I tried to call my wife, Eli, and two young children, Maddie and Rowan, in Bali to report this encounter but no signal was available.

After travelling through the canal and crossing the Katingan River, to which the canal was connected at the other side, we arrived at Mendawai Village at about ten pm. A group had arrived before us that included Rezal, Taryono, Starling Resource’s field crew leader, Andrew Wardell, the Director of the Clinton Climate Initiative, Brer Adams, Senior Manager for Utilities and Climate Change with the MacQuarie Group, Dharsono Hartono, Managing Director of PT. Rimba Makmur Utama ( First Prosperous Forest) and the Katingan project’s principal investor, Kirk Lange, Head of Research and Development at PT. Rimba Makmur Utama, and Amy Chew, a Senior Correspondent with the New Straits Times, published in Kuala Lampur.

Emerging Vision

We walked up one of Mendawai’s only three or four roads. All of the roads are graded dirt and very pot –holed from the previous rainy season. We stopped at a warung where some of the group sat, greeted them and ordered from the option of chicken soup or fried chicken. Earlier in the day, several in the group had flown back –and –forth in a small plane over Katingan. Some of the site’s boundaries are marked by rivers. Others are encroached on by oil palm plantations, artisanal gold mines and illegal logging patches. These three rudely narrow valuations of natural resources are ripping the heart out of our world’s ancestral biodiversity and extensively degrading global ecological integrity and the prospect of a reasonable quality of life for our children.

Under an intense canopy of stars and amidst competing choruses of nocturnal creatures, Andrew Wardell eloquently reminded us that peat forests are the world’s richest forest –based carbon storage – the peat layer reaching some twelve meters down in many parts of Katingan. Their destruction over recent decades has released billions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere, accelerating climate change. He described peat fires that burn for months uncontrolled beneath the ground – and undetected until they reach a forest edge where mature standing trees begin to fall over because fire has cut through their root systems.

Within the next hour or so of conversation, it became clear to me that the group gathered at Mendawai shared a common vision, shaped by irrefutable logic wrought by climate change, to reinterpret the defining relationship between humans and our natural environment. The vision integrates conservation initiatives of enormous scale with market principles.

I slept deeply on a thin mattress laid on the floor of a small room in Mendawai’s only losman. As no bed cover was provided, I awoke early in the morning to lay an extra shirt across my bare feet. A little later, at about 5 am, an extremely loud morning call to prayer, azan, blared from a mosque located directly across the road from the losman. It sounded burdened and bedraggled, in contrast to other calls to prayer I’ve heard, whose mellifluousness can coax an agnostic from his bed before sunrise, to his knees and seeking redemption. Yet the sound seemed fitting to Mendawai’s circumstances.

A setting could hardly better answer the description “in the middle of nowhere. ” Yet, by 6 am I was seated on an old wooden bench, listening to a fantastic racket of birdsong and sipping sweet tea with Andrew, Dharsono, Brer and Rezal, all of them possessing expertise in understanding climate change and actively involved in shaping large forest –based mitigation responses. They are among the vanguard of innovative problem solvers who envision a world where respect for natural systems is an integral component of economic viability and success. Andrew leads teams in formulating methodologies to measure and monitor forest –based carbon sinks. He also manages stakeholders so that all might duly benefit from a site’s development. Currently he manages projects in Cambodia, Vietnam and Indonesia. He is a strong proponent of a REDD response to climate change. REDD was created because most of the world’s remaining old –growth tropical forests, the forests richest in carbon containment, are located in developing countries. Until the recent debate – precipitated by climate change – about integrating carbon responsibility with our economics, most of the world’s tropical developing countries served as natural resource depots which industrialized countries could recklessly exploit to help sustain their invention, prosperity and growth. The traditional model of exploitation, though, has significantly paused as a struggle escalates to redefine value of the world’s natural resources. But exploitation is not patient.

Mendawai’s Uncertain Future

After breakfast, we walked to Mendawai’s government administrative building. As with many government entities in Indonesia, its presence seems out –sized relative to the location’s small population and spare infrastructure. It is the biggest building in the village and contains many offices populated by officials wearing pressed uniforms emboldened by prominent epaulettes. Approximately ten –percent of Indonesia’s two –hundred and forty million citizens are on a local, provincial or federal payroll. Compare that to the United States where only four or five percent of the population work for a government sector. It would not seem so disproportionate if Indonesia boasted an exemplary civil infrastructure which skilled government officials routinely and assiduously maintained and improved. Instead, Mendawai serves as a telling microcosm for Indonesia’s political and economic challenges. The village is ramshackle, sagging from tropical dissolution, while the government administrative offices remain tidy, its many pairs of epaulettes starched and vigilant, awaiting opportunity.

Most government employees in Indonesia aren’t paid enough to live on and are, in fact, expected to finesse a living income by profitably asserting power attained from their position. Also, government employees often incur debt from having borrowed money to buy their position. Money and connections supplant merit; reasonable compensation depends on irregular exploitation of legal and illegal business revenue streams: when people speak of “systemic corruption ” these are conditions from which it arises.

Systemic corruption in Indonesia must change and can change beginning with a serious and committed effort by the international community to engage Indonesia as a partner in fee –based, forest carbon containment. A first step might be to ensure the Ministry of Forests hires Indonesian personnel according to merit and offers them compensation appropriate to affording a reasonable standard of living.

During decades of unrestrained timber harvests around Mendawai, opportunity availed itself to all. The forest’s bounty of timber seemed a limitless sea. Mendawai is founded on that period of exploitation. During those days, a harvest crew leader could make $1000 a month, sawyers $300 –$400 a month – enormous compensation, at that time, for unskilled and little–educated Indonesians. Results from unregulated logging of forests whose wood attracted wide international demand are what you would expect. Today, all the low –hanging fruit is gone and expanses of land appear obliterated. Also, continued harvests have been greatly staggered by a logging moratorium imposed by the government in 2005, when they began to take seriously the prospect of collecting higher revenues from their forests’ managed carbon storage.

During the past few years, Mendawai’s population has declined by about half, to approximately 1500 citizens. Incomes, patched together from small–holder agriculture, fishing, boat–building and whatever other opportunity might pass up or down the river, are a fraction of their previous timber–era standards. Tropical rains and sun bear down, modern conveniences purchased during flush times show stress, people wait. Arrayed in a spacious office, we listened to an articulate government spokesman describe the direness of Mendawai’s situation. He explained they were interested in examining any potential that might improve their economic condition. He suggested we could gain the community’s undivided attention to our conservation and carbon –containment vision if we built a road between Mendawai and a more economically strategic place.

Peat Forests Versus A World of Desire

Peat forests are the richest forest –based carbon sinks in the world. Conserving the integrity of remaining peat forests and, if possible, expanding them is very important to mitigating climate change. Scientists who are expert in understanding forests’ roles in regulating climate have warned that further degradation of existing primary forest lands will prove a strongly enabling piece to catastrophic climate change. Industry fells trees in Kalimantan’s peat forests to generate wood material favored for structural beams, flooring and furniture. Plenty of ecologically sustainable substitutes exist to replace trees harvested from Kalimantan’s peat forests, but desires are hard to subdue. A market is opportunity to answer material need or desire. In our wealth–obsessed era, markets are often exploited, without due consideration of broader consequences, to acquire excess. When a market’s broader consequences become untenable and logic of serious regulatory correction fails to respond, what strategies might be employed to oppose it? Elective self–restraint has not yet gained popular momentum in “the commons.” The majority of us respond to immediate alarm; the closer alarm comes to compromising our well–being, the more responsive we become. For too many of us, enough response arises only after our well–being has been chafed or battered. Science has modeled consequences of climate change. They are alarming. In many models, anticipated expressions of challenge are exceeded by reality. “Feedback loops ” are asserting magnitudes of negative change – disastrous change – at a much faster pace than many scientists projected. These are some common projections based on widely accepted climate change models: By 2030, after the polar ice caps have significantly melted, approximately 2000 of Indonesia’s some 16, 000 islands will have been swallowed by rising seas. Millions – tens of millions? Hundreds of millions? – of people living in coastal communities around the world will have been displaced. To where? Provoking what disruptions? How will the seas’ rising temperatures and disrupted chemistry affect marine ecosystems and food stocks? How will changing weather patterns affect terrestrial ecosystems and food stocks? Rising temperatures and extended dry seasons caused by climate change have sharply increased incidents of record fires throughout the world. How many records will be broken by 2030? Global population will be pushing 8.5 billion by then, unless fierce competition for diminished natural resources pares that number through multiplying conflicts and wars.

We are spiraling into an era of the unthinkable. Is it possible for us to respond to an atypical issue with atypical efficiency of logic? Might capitalism’s principles –and guiding instincts – be rapidly modified to support a natural world of which we are inextricably a part? I know some well–educated, good –hearted people for whom growing wealthy and surrounding themselves with material signals of wealth is a life–defining objective. Capitalism encourages this perspective but history reveals the perspective has ever existed prominently in many cultures. If desire to accumulate material excess is an ingrained characteristic of many of us, might it be possible to redefine the signals of wealth so that our pursuit of them adds to the common good? Could we reinterpret values of goods so that the values accord with sustaining the broader quality of our social and natural environments? In such a system, for example, gold, the world’s perceived default safe investment, might sharply decline in value. We would replace our perception of gold with its reality: mining gold destroys vast areas of important ecosystems; it pollutes watersheds with toxic chemicals such as cyanide and mercury; because we have decided to assign it high and very liquid value in trade, gold is largely compiled as bricks and coins and worked into jewelry rather than applied to constructive use. We might choose to apply a stigmatization to gold that it has earned through a long, well–documented history of influencing environmental destruction, cultural upheaval and social conflict. Is it possible to decide not to assign gold high value? In doing so, we would choose a better future for ourselves by helping to protect the integrity of natural environments.

Also, in a holistically considered world, maybe cultivating a forest garden in your back yard, using native species and organic techniques, could generate valuable tax credits through its carbon storage, contribution to protecting a watershed and maintenance of biodiversity. Adding forest gardens could raise property values if we simply chose to acknowledge and support their value. People might seek and compete for an excess of this sort of wealth, cultivating brilliant, expansive, luxurious forest gardens. Gold pebbles, left over from the ore’s price crash, when people shrugged and decided it was wildly over –valued for no good or useful reason, might be mixed with other types of recycled rock material to form a gravel path through the garden.

Instead, as consequences of climate change grow clearer and more ominous, gold is priced historically high and trees harvested from Kalimantan’s peat forests are still perceived by many as being more valuable turned into objects than they are for their multiple benefits as part of a forest ecosystem. The trajectory of our material covetousness has arrived at a juncture where it might begin to contradict Darwin’s well –regarded theories about survival. Even against the full force of science’s findings and vivid, enduring, negative consequences that undermine our common good, we remain deeply challenged to restrain consumer excess.

Tropical Salvage

“Tropical Salvage ” is a part I bring to Rezal’s and Dharsono’s visionary Katingan collaboration. Tropical Salvage integrates business with best environmental and social practices because we understand the business community must lead in answering unprecedented challenges to environmental and social integrity. In spite of cynicisms’ prodigious draw – one particularly affecting in an era when the world’s leading power, my government, bails out financial institutions that have financed and grown rich from practicing a variety of capitalism that trails a century –long wake of global –scale environmental devastation – I choose optimism and believe a form of economic activism will recover and deliver us from generations of arrogance. I believe this because climate change leaves no other rational choice and because I believe an emotional portal unlocked by caring for children, and offering no quarter to cynicism, fortifies our intention with redeeming grace. I believe that, once bailed out, the same financial institutions will invest strongly in businesses that enable environmental recovery, as these many emerging businesses modeled after common good capitalism are the future’s best, if not single, hope for a reasonable quality of life.

And make no mistake, it is largely the “developed world” responsibility to lead this economic gambit. Indonesia well reflects challenges to the “developing world ” in assuming roles of leadership to advance positive change. Restricted by economic circumstances, most Indonesians haven’t had the opportunities or experience to interpret their choices in the context of broader consequences – whether locally or globally. Starkly, they need money, they need food, they need health care and, in the case of Mendawai, they need a road connecting their village to higher value markets. That’s the breadth of vision their experience allows them. If felling, legally or illegally, some peat forest trees answers their spare needs for a day, or a week, then, without the existence of alternative work to answer those needs, the forests will fall.

In Mendawai, Tropical Salvage can help to abate this logic. It will provide jobs salvaging wood from rivers and deconstructing defunct, dilapidated milling warehouses. The work will reduce illegal logging and poaching, as well as create a platform from which to communicate a conservation perspective that is critical to protecting Katingan and thus to adding a piece to restoring global ecological integrity. We will work in concert with local and federal government and forestry administrators, with the project’s eco –entrepreneurs and investors, with carbon scientists and forest mappers, with wildlife biologists and ethno botanists, with community organizers and forest product industry spokespeople, with fishermen and rattan gatherers. We will be part of an integrated strategy to become part of the solution.

Tropical Salvage products are a fruit of positive change. We build furniture from discovered and deconstructed woods that are largely perceived as waste, applying building techniques to convert material irregularities into added value. Also, when consumers buy Tropical Salvage products, in addition to acquiring exceptional value, they directly contribute to forest conservation and restoration projects in Indonesia, including, we hope, the Katingan site. We make positive impact consuming convenient; we practice common good capitalism. While we vigilantly attend to a business bottom–line, accumulating material wealth is not a specific objective. Instead, we aim to contribute to salvaging a peaceful relationship between people and tropical environments. Social and environmental health is the new wealth. Should we succeed at establishing and growing our part of the solution, no amount of gold can compete with the legacy.

Bringing the Forest Home

On the way out I silently inventoried potentials for salvageable wood in Kalimantan. Limbs, logs and whole trees litter the banks of the Katingan and Mentaia rivers. Walls of defunct milling warehouses fade and buckle along the shores. The prow of an enormous log –hauling ship protrudes from the Katingan River’s surface where excess sank it. Loggers I spoke to in Mendawai remembered cutting all the trees standing in the way of targeted stands and leaving off –species behind; they confirmed a common logging practice of sending only tree bodies to the marketplace and leaving their limbs in the forest to burn or float away in floods. Based solely on visible salvage potential, there are decades of work, here, transforming waste into high value.

Crossing the Mentaia, we encountered a ship hauling a pile of newly milled logs, headed down river to the sea and our world of commerce. The trees were taken from Borneo’s far and receding wild interior, where, I recently read, some members of the last nomadic Penan tribes are answering incursions on their ancestral lands from logging and oil exploration with blow guns and bows and arrows. Diameters of some of the logs were greater than my six foot height.

As we approached a dock where we would meet our ride back to Palankaraya, we passed several tall, simply constructed, white buildings with many small rectangular portals. I recognized them as towers built to attract swallows whose nests are the anchor ingredient of a soup widely favored in China. Many swallows flew around the buildings, some entering and some exiting. A racket of bird squawk and chatter sounded distinctly over the boat motor’s din. The deafening bird sounds suggested there were many more birds in the buildings than outside. I tapped Taryono’s shoulder, and with my other hand pointed at the towers. “Jutaan burung walet! ” (“Millions of swallows!”) I exclaimed, pointing to the buildings. He shook his head. “Bukan! ” (“No, that’s not right! “). “Mereka pakai pita suara!” ( “They use a soundtrack!”).

As I listened to ersatz swallow–shrieking, it occurred to me that the soundtrack was likely calibrated to sound optimally attractive to the species of swallow sought for its edible nest. I’m struck at least as often by my species’ genius as I am by its idiocy. I believe our genius has, like Las Vegas’ gambling parlors, an edge. As if to punctuate the thought, my phone vibrated in my pocket. Still very deep in Borneo’s hinterland, I could already call my aging mother in Chicago to ask how her garden is growing.

My daughter, Madeline, answered my “Hello ” to tell me she “loves me like a whale.” It’s a thing we say that characterizes the size of our feelings. I imagined the sentiment ricocheting between signal towers across stretches of land and sea. What genius we’ve employed to be able to instantly cast our audible love across the world. And what genius is our capacity to love. It will prevail.

We were just notified of an article on CNNMoney.com, because it discusses an interesting aspect of Kizuri, a retailer that carries Tropical Salvage furniture.

The article by Helaine Olen explores an unusual and exciting financing strategy for small businesses: obtaining funding and investment from members of the local community.

I recommend perusing the article to discover how community funding led to unexpected benefits for local businesses – – benefits that went well beyond just an infusion of capital in a down economy.

Kim Harmson, the orchestrator of Kizuri Spokane, commented on the article: “One important factor that was not mentioned in the article is that Kizuri gives 7.5% of annual profits back to the community. This was built in to the business plan/proposal and was a key consideration for investors. Their dollars have a long lasting effect in building and supporting our Spokane community. It’s a beautiful thing!”

By Karen McKay

I have never been a Street of Dreams kind of person. It always seemed like it would be a bit too perfect for me. However, when our good friend Phyllis Spaulding asked if we would like to participate in this year’s 2009 Street of Dreams in Portland’s Pearl District I was intrigued. The majority of apartments and condos in the Pearl are extremely modern and, although I have always believed in mixing styles, I also know that it is not easy to pull off.

Well, having previewed the unit, I can say that Phyllis, along with the other unit designers and contributors, has pulled it off beautifully. Not only is the unit, The Ambassador, exquisitely styled with lovely things but it looks like the kind of place in which you could envision a real person living – a real person with extremely good taste!

And so, since that person has extremely good taste, the unit has a large number of Tropical Salvage pieces, of course! The master bedroom is outfitted with a Tropical Salvage bed, dresser, nightstands, and Taproot Hang Tree. The music room features two Asymmetrical bookshelves and a Stalwart Console. The living room revolves around a large Kretek Coffee Table. But the large, Pithecanthropus Feasting Table and benches in the dining area are perhaps the most striking arrangement in the entire unit. The juxtaposition of the glittering, modern chandelier and the irregular, organic table is stunning. The large painting on the wall with its soft colors and lines pulls it all together. Anyone who thinks you can’t pull modern and primitive together need only look at this arrangement!

I encourage you to visit the Street of Dreams in the Pearl this August, and stop by The Ambassador. Tropical Salvage wishes to thank the tireless efforts of Phyllis Spaulding, Pivotal Design NW, and Carole Bordak of Forever Art. Their vision and hard work have created a warm and welcoming space that Tropical Salvage is proud to a part of.