As this koa i'm working on comes from the US as a gift from Chuck and VAT was paid on entry to the UK..Should there be any problems sending the completed uke back to the US.
The value of Koa was recognized early on and—instead of cutting all the forests down—much Koa stock is now farmed. However, the old wild tress seem have the nicest figure. So, yeah, not endangered like certain rosewood varieties.
That is not quite accurate. Actually, they did cut the forests down. I've been in and around the koa forest for over 30 years and almost no koa comes from any plantation. Planting of koa has only just begun in the last 10-20 years and any koa cut from young trees only barely even looks like koa. Koa is such a very long term future oriented cash crop that there has not been much incentive for land owners to get involved in it. Much of the koa being cut comes from what they often called "dead and dying" trees. None of these trees are plantation grown, are not replaced with new plantings, and a certain amount of them are also not "dead and dying".
The koa I've always bought was said to be "reclaimed" wood. I've always been curious where it was "reclaimed" from and assumed it was from old buildings and such. It makes me feel better to know that the wood was being re-purposed into ukuleles. However the original tree still died.
I was watching one of those "house-hunting" shows over my wife's shoulder.
One of the candidate houses on Oahu was a 1200 square foot house.
They mentioned in passing that the hardwood floors were koa.