Antananarivo  - A group of international environmental organizations and universities have called for a boycott of precious wood from Madagascar, saying criminal gangs have been using months of political turmoil to plunder protected forests.

The campaign is underwritten by, among others, the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF), Conservation International, the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria and several universities that have been working on conservation in Madagascar.

"Consumers of rosewood and ebony products are asked to check their origin, and boycott those made of Malagasy wood," they said in a statement issued this week.

The group say that, since transitional President Andry Rajoelina came to power in March in a bloodless coup, hundreds of shipping containers of illegally-harvested precious wood have left the country.

Although the new government had issued a decree banning the exploitation of precious woods, it had later issued a second decree allowing the harvested wood to be exported, the environmentalists claimed.

"Madagascar's forests have long suffered from the abusive exploitation of precious woods, most particularly rosewoods and ebonies, but the country's recent political problems have resulted in a dramatic increase in their exploitation," they noted in a statement.

"This activity now represents a serious threat to those who rely on the forest for goods and services and for the country's rich, unique and highly endangered flora and fauna," they said.

Madagascar has one of the world's richest stores of rare plant and animal species, including 47 species of rosewood and over 100 species of ebony that occur nowhere else.

"No forest that contains precious woods is safe," according to the statement, which listed Marojejy and Masoala World Heritage Sites and the Mananara Biosphere Reserve, all in the north-east, as among the chief targets of roving lumbermen.

The lumbermen were also poaching lemurs - an endangered primate found only on Madagascar and the nearby Comoros islands, the statement added.

In Thursday's Midi Madagasikara newspaper, WWF Madagascar head Niall O'Connor called on the government to revoke all licenses for the export of precious wood and to invest the money it has earned from the exports into the reforestation of the affected parks. (dpa)