Poachers vs Lamma islanders in battle for rare incense trees

Shaun Martin was still lying in bed after waking up one spring morning two years ago, when he was startled by police and firefighters standing on the balcony of his first floor flat on Lamma Island. Dressing quickly, he went out to investigate. That's when he found "a bloody great big tree above me", recalls Martin, an education consultant. The tree had crashed into a window on the floor above.

His upstairs neighbour, businessman Chris Lonsdale, was furious. "Some a****le had cut the tree and I had no idea who it was," he says.

According to the police it was poachers. It turns out the tree was an Aquilaria sinensis, a species sometimes known as the incense tree, and poachers in a hurry to harvest the valuable heartwood had simply cut through much of the trunk, causing it to fall.

When infected by a certain type of mould, incense trees make an aromatic resin that permeates its core, yielding what is often called agarwood. Native to southern China the fragrant wood has long been used to make incense, joss sticks, prayer beads, oil and carvings. The extracted resin, chen xiang, is also used as a traditional Chinese medicine.

Indiscriminate harvesting has almost wiped out incense trees from the mainland, prompting poachers to turn to Hong Kong where stands can still be found in the wild, because local woodlands are relatively protected under the Forests and Countryside Ordinance.

Similarly threatened worldwide, Aquilaria sinensis is categorised as a vulnerable species on the red list of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and is listed under Appendix Two of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (Cites), which means its trade should be restricted.