To build the urban jungle that is New York, city agencies have often raided real ones: threatened tropical rainforests in South America and West Africa.

Subway lines, the Brooklyn Bridge pedestrian walk and the Staten Island Ferry docks are all built and actively maintained with such tropical wood. New Yorkers ride, walk and play on the remnants of these trees every day, most unaware that their transit systems have contributed to degrading some of the world's last remaining rainforests.

New York City agencies are today among the nation's biggest consumers of certain threatened tropical hardwood products, chosen for their durability and resistance to underwater rot. The agencies' use of the increasingly at-risk trees continues despite pledges to shift to sustainable sources nearly 20 years ago and a decades-old state ban on purchasing many such species.

The world's rainforests are starting to collapse, and New York may be complicit.

Once, it was almost "impossible" for a fire to start in wet, humid rainforests, said forest ecologist Cyril Kormos. But in 2024, the tropics lost a record amount of forest, nearly half from fire—a sign that the ancient ecosystems are breaking down under climate change, deforestation and logging.

While forests may look green from above, satellite data shows areas with the tallest trees have declined in logging areas leased to companies that have supplied city contractors. Such decline is one of the first signs that the hundreds-year-old hardwood trees, which form the forest's backbone, are being removed unsustainably.

CJS' analysis of satellite imagery from the University of Maryland's GLAD laboratory shows that areas of current Guyanese timber concessions with trees at least 30 meters tall declined by 13 percent between 2000 and 2020, while areas with no or shorter trees increased.

Last year, these areas also lost over four times more primary forest than the annual average loss over the past decade, with record tree loss from fires, according to Global Forest Watch data.

Commercial "sustainable" certifications have failed, Kormos said, since logging cycles are too short for slow-growing hardwoods like greenheart or ekki to recover. He said this often drives companies to log illegally, and once the high-value species are depleted, clear the forest for farming.

Satellite imagery shows companies renting areas of Guyana's rainforest for 'reduced-impact-logging' are removing the tallest trees

Map of Guyana with remote sensing data from UMD's GLAD laboratory, with different colors representing land use change between 2000-2020

New York has degraded forest not only in the Amazon, but also in the vast Congo basin. For years, the MTA has bought old-growth "ekki/azobé" lumber, which the IUCN classifies as vulnerable, from West Africa for the New York City subway.

Data CJS acquired through a public records request shows that between 2014-2024, the authority made 142 purchases of tropical hardwood for rail blocks and ties, costing a total of $14.7 million.

In 2002, an MTA ekki purchase under the NYC Transit Authority was linked to illegal arms trafficking in Liberia, according to City Limits. In recent years, the authority has attempted to buy wood from more ethical sources. In the last decade, the authority's main contractors – William G. Moore & Son, Inc. and Boro Sawmill & Timber Co. – primarily imported wood from Dutch company Hupkes Wijma and its precursors, MTA and ImportGenius records show.

Wijma managed a group of subsidiaries that had international Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification to manage six forest parcels, called concessions, in Cameroon, the first acquired in 2005. But the company sold all of its concessions in 2017 to a Hong Kong-based company, according to Swedwatch – part of a wave of departures of European companies with sustainability certifications that struggled to break even, said Justin Kamga, the Cameroon coordinator of Forêt et Développement Rural (FODER), a forest monitoring NGO.

This system can mislead importers who assume all companies with FSC logos log sustainably, said Rick Jacobsen, a commodities policy manager at the Environmental Investigation Agency.

There is no public information on where Wijma currently acquires its ekki. Some of the company's public-facing information still incorrectly lists the company's Cameroon concessions. A 2020 press release from Swiss timber company Precious Woods connected at least some of Wijma's imports to this FSC-certified company in Gabon.

Before Wijma left Cameroon, various Greenpeace investigations tied the company to illegal logging and negative community impacts.

In 2002, this environmental NGO found that Wijma logged outside its boundaries and destroyed local communities' crops. In 2015, it reported that a Cameroonian supplier of Hupkes Houthandel Dieren B.V. – one of the companies that merged to become Hupkes Wijma – was trading illegal timber harvested from rapidly deforested "cut and run" forest parcels. In 2018, it countered Wijma's history of operating in a conflict zone.

Wijma's departure also created other problems. A 2023 Pulitzer Center investigation found that when Wijma subsidiary CFK sold one of its forest concessions, land titles were established on indigenous land.

When Wijma left another of its concessions, it sold its forestry activities to shareholders that deforested parts bordering Campo Ma'an National Park to grow palm oil. According to Kamga, this plantation has destroyed elephant habitats and resulted in some elephants entering villages and ravaging local farms.

The 2019 Swedwatch report revealed that logging operations by Wijma and another European company, Rougier, "had led to a significant decrease in forest foods and non-timber forest products" for local communities.

Kamga said the forest is like a "supermarket" for local people who collect wood, food, and other resources – so logging is like "bombing the supermarket."

Selective logging of ekki and other hardwoods has also degraded forests where Wijma operated. CJS' analysis of satellite data shows that areas with the tallest trees declined 15 percent between 2000 and 2020 in these six concessions.

Hupkes Wijma did not respond to multiple interview requests over two months, and the MTA declined requests.

For decades, the MTA has been in the process of moving away from tropical wood. The authority began researching alternative tie materials in 2009. After Hurricane Sandy flooded the Staten Island Railway, the MTA reconstructed parts of the railroad with ties made out of recycled plastic. Other tracks are constructed out of concrete.

But ekki procurements persist, and the city's famous subway continues to roll atop the remains of tropical trees.

Plans by city agencies since at least 2008 have not yet led to their phase-out of tropical timber.

At the 2007 U.N. climate conference, former city Mayor Michael Bloomberg committed to develop a plan to reduce tropical hardwood. That document, released in February 2008, estimated the city was spending about $1 million annually on such wood and laid out short and long-term plans for each agency to cut their use.

Seventeen years later, the Departments of Transportation and Sanitation have delayed to reach many of those goals.

In the plan, the DOT pledged to rebuild the Brooklyn Bridge Promenade with an alternative material by 2017. But the latest replacement in 2023 still used greenheart, according to Rainforest Relief. A 2016 DOT presentation described a concept to rebuild the bridge's wooden walkway, but did not mention the material.

The department did not respond to questions about the bridge. But Flagg, the TREES Act sponsor's staff, said DOT was concerned about ensuring any possible restructure could withstand the weight of thousands of pedestrians.

The 2008 plan also mandated the department to conduct a study on possible alternatives for the Staten Island Ferry docks. But the million-dollar study by infrastructure consulting firm AECOM ended up recommending that greenheart be maintained.

DOT once trialed recycled plastic lumber on a small section, but all boards were damaged when the ship docked, said John Garvey, the ferry's deputy commissioner. He said that plastic lacks greenheart's elasticity and flexibility, which helps absorb the boat's energy to land gently.

Garvey said the department is currently working with the Mayor's Office of Management and Budget to design a new piling system composed of steel, pads and concrete, which will start construction on one dock for a trial run within "a year or so."

But he said this new dock was extremely expensive – costing $40 million, compared to just $2-3 million that he estimated the department spends annually for greenheart.

Garvey also said it didn't make sense to rebuild the Manhattan-side docks before the ferry terminal moves to its new location, which is planned under a huge climate resilience project to raise the lower Manhattan waterfront. But the city is looking for federal dollars, so major reconstructions in this project are most likely on hold under the Trump administration, he said.

For now, greenheart shipments continue. In July at the ferry's Manhattan terminal, four new logs and a stack of lumber were floating on a dock underneath a large crane, ready to replace older wood.

"Environmentally, I think it makes sense for us to try and find [an alternative material]. Fiscally, I don't know that it does," Garvey, who has worked at the ferry for almost 20 years, said.

"From our perspective, we're going to try and transition to electric ferries, because we're constantly putting out emissions, whereas putting these pilings in the ground, there's no continued emission or effect on the environment if they are truly harvesting these in a good way, " he said. "Then, fiscally, it would make sense to continue to use it. But if they're not, then I understand why we should [transition]."

By the time the 2008 Bloomberg plan was released, the Department of Sanitation had not yet constructed its five marine transfer stations that integrated greenheart.

But the plan approved the department to proceed because of the cost and time to change design – a decision that set it on a path to hardwood dependence.

The plan also initially noted that the transfer stations' greenheart procurements would be a "one time" cost and that Sanitation would seek to identify "reasonable alternatives" for rehabilitation.

However, there is evidence that this wood has already been replaced – by more greenheart. In 2016, the department ordered greenheart for the transfer stations that was worth about 390 trees, a shipping document shows. This was slightly more than the department's initial greenheart purchases less than a decade earlier.

In response to questions sent by CJS, press secretary Vincent Gragnani said the department had been reducing or avoiding the use of tropical hardwoods since 2008.

The department's contract records show an effort to use other types of wood. Sanitation bought pressure-treated southern yellow pine, a domestic wood, from American producers in 2012, 2015 and 2017.

Gragnani also wrote that in a recent design workshop for marine transfer station repairs, the department "emphasized the need for construction to comply with Article 71- Prohibition of Tropical Hardwoods."

This article refers to the 1993 state hardwood ban, which didn't prohibit greenheart.

Legislative efforts to close this law's loopholes have been further stymied by corporate lobby groups that import other products from tropical forests for state contracts.

Between 1997 and 2002, city legislators introduced but failed to pass council bills to require or encourage independent sustainability certification for all tropical hardwood.

Two decades later, a new bill – the Tropical Rainforest Economic & Environmental Sustainability Act, called the TREES Act – has also failed in the last three legislative sessions. It was vetoed in 2023 and 2024, and stalled in committee this year in the Assembly.

Beyond prohibiting tropical wood, this bill also included other products linked to rainforest deforestation, such as beef, paper, coffee and palm oil, which are often produced on industrial farms that clear rainforest. The bill would have required companies that supply state contracts to track their supply chains to ensure their products don't come from deforested areas.

Some of the main concerns are big food purchases by public universities and prisons that are supplied by companies like Sysco and Aramark, according to Sen. Krueger's office.

Last year, paper company Sylvamo, the American Forest & Paper Association (AF&PA), and the Northeastern Retail Lumber Association lobbied against the bill, according to records on the New York State Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government.

In May, the Empire State Forest Products Association (ESFPA), a New York group of wood product manufacturers, sent a memo opposing the bill's definitions of terms like "deforestation," "forest degradation," "tree plantation" and "at-risk commodity." The Association worried that these definitions could be replicated in future laws on non-tropical wood, such as the lumber ESFPA members produce from New York forests, said John Bartow, the association's executive director. The memo urged "serious scientific review" of such terms.

The governor's veto memos also expressed concerns about the "significant burdens" the certification requirements might place on small businesses to verify the geographic origin of their products.

But according to members of the bill's coalition, which consulted at least 37 supply chain experts, many affordable traceability systems already exist that would take the burden off businesses to develop their own.

The bill's sponsors had already agreed to carve out over a decade for the DOT and MTA to transition. While the bill would have required most companies to comply in 2028, the MTA would have had until 2031 and the DOT until 2034 to fully adhere, with possible additional extensions up to 2036 and 2039.

Tim Keating was tired of empty promises.

For years, the environmentalist and former New Yorker had written letters, made reports, and met with Parks Department staff to protest its use of rainforest timber. But nothing had changed.

So Keating and four other activists scaled the 262-foot Parachute Jump, a derelict World's Fair ride in Coney Island.

Hanging onto the metallic structure, at the height of a 26-story building, the group unfurled a huge banner imploring Parks to "stop killing rainforests for boardwalks and benches."

They were later charged with endangerment and trespassing – but the feat worked. Finally, Parks accepted the group to meet with the commissioner.

This 1998 stunt was the turning point for Keating, who led a small group called Rainforest Relief over more than two decades that protested the city's use of tropical hardwood.

"Up until that point, Parks had met with me but not done anything," he said.

Years earlier, when visiting Coney Island, Keating noticed a "broad, expansive", "cinnamon-colored" wood.

The wood, called ipê, originated from the Brazilian Amazon. From the 1980s-90s, Parks converted all 12 miles of beach boardwalk from Douglas fir, grown in the American west, to ipê.

According to Rainforest Relief, the move inspired a nationwide trend of boardwalks built with tropical wood, including ones in New York's Long Beach, New Jersey and California. Parks also built tens of thousands of park benches with the durable wood.

Parks continued to renovate its boardwalks with tropical lumber, ordering 'cumaru' wood from Brazilian company Precious Woods in 2006. Another supplier, Peruvian company Maderera Bozovich, was linked to widespread illegal logging.

But Keating's activism led Parks to eventually transition to other materials, including concrete, asphalt, and recycled plastic lumber. Parks started reconstructing boardwalks with other materials in 2010, and purchase records show the last benches were installed with tropical wood in 2013.

After Hurricane Sandy destroyed the Long Beach boardwalk in 2012, FEMA paid this city about $40 million to replace its 2.2-mile boardwalk using ipê, which Rainforest Relief estimated to have logged nine square miles of Amazon forests.

In 2022, ipê and cumaru were added to CITES Appendix II, a list of species at risk of extinction that require special trade controls.

For years, Parks still imported small amounts of tropical wood for single-board replacements. Between 2018 and 2021, Parks spent over $200,000 on ipê contracts, city comptroller records show. But Parks now repurposes old tropical hardwood boards or uses domestic hardwoods, such as ash or oak, for these repairs.

Today, the only remaining wooden boardwalk runs alongside portions of the Staten Island beach and Coney Island. The boards are weathered, many screws undone. On a warm July evening on Staten Island, beachgoers and bikers traverse the old wooden walkway. An elderly man steps on a broken plank that has become a tripping hazard, a loud thud heard from meters away.

For Keating, the city's story is a "microcosm for the whole country": a pattern of "prolonging the destruction" by exploiting one high-value species after another, until none can regenerate.

"When Europeans came here, they targeted timber species unless they reached the last," he said. "So that's why we've turned to the tropics. And we've run through five or six species. We gobbled them up until they became commercially extinct, and then we moved to the next one."