WEST KALIMANTAN PROVINCE, Indonesia — Word spread fast that heavy machinery had arrived in the ancient rainforest near the Indonesian village of Sungai Mata-Mata, an expanse on the western edge of the island of Borneo that is home to orangutans, clouded leopards and sun bears.
Flouting the law, the excavators began digging trenches to drain the area’s protected wetlands. Then came the logging crews, which cut down woodlands the size of more than 2,800 football fields in just a few days.
It was an apocalyptic sight, said Samsidar, a regional forestry official who goes by one name, recalling the devastation he encountered two years ago. “The trees had turned into piles of wood.”
Not just any kind of wood, though. The trees were meranti, a species found mostly in Indonesia and other parts of Southeast Asia, and their tropical hardwood is of particular interest to one industry in the United States: manufacturers of motor homes.
The United States is the world’s largest producer of recreational vehicles and has relied for decades on meranti, which is also known as lauan. The timber is processed into a plywood that is lightweight, moisture-resistant, flexible and cut into thin sheets. RV makers use it for interior walls, flooring, cabinets and other features.
Catering to this demand, conservation groups say, has accelerated deforestation in Borneo. In the last five years alone, tens of thousands of acres of the island’s forests have been chopped down for lauan, usually with the Indonesian government’s permission. This has contributed to the disappearance of some of the world’s largest rainforests and wetlands, unleashing dense stores of carbon, upending the lives of Indigenous people and endangering the habitats of orangutans and other animals.
Since 2020, the United States has bought more than $900 million of the lauan plywood that goes into RVs, the vast majority of it from Indonesia, U.S. trade data show. (Lauan is also used by the construction industry.)
America’s RV industry has long portrayed itself as a good steward of the environment; it calls on its consumers to protect public lands and promotes its vehicles as a way for people to connect with the great outdoors. Among the big RV makers, Thor Industries says that its suppliers are forbidden by U.S. law to buy illegal timber, and Winnebago says that it is committed to preserving the planet.
Thor added that it was not aware of any deforested wood in its supply chain. Winnebago referred questions about the origins of its lauan to its supplier, Patrick Industries, a U.S. company, and the RV Industry Association — neither of which responded to requests for comment. Nor did Forest River, another big RV maker.
But the industry has defended its use of lauan, some of which is selectively harvested so forests can continue to grow.
“Without access to lauan, manufacturers would be forced to use thicker, heavier materials that reduce livable space, impact fuel efficiency, and compromise the structural design and safety of the RV,” the RV Industry Association said in a letter to the Trump administration in April while arguing against new tariffs on the plywood.
“In short,” it added, “lauan is not just a preference — it is a functional necessity integral to nearly every RV built in the United States.”
Some composite materials have emerged as potential alternatives to lauan. But RV makers say they are not as versatile and are typically more expensive.
Conservation groups say RV makers are only focused on price and do not have policies to responsibly source lauan. This allows deforested timber to taint the industry’s supply chains, they say. Sustainably grown lauan now is plentiful in Indonesia, and while it goes for about 20% more, Earthsight, a group based in Britain, argued that outfitting an RV with only that kind of wood would have a negligible effect on its price.
“Nature-loving RV owners would surely be more than happy to pay this tiny price,” said Sam Lawson, Earthsight’s director.
Thor and Winnebago did not comment on Earthsight’s assertion. Forest River did not respond to a request for comment.
Indonesia has long seen its forests as an economic resource and has cleared tens of millions of acres this century alone, much of it for palm oil and pulpwood. But the American RV industry’s role in deforestation has drawn little scrutiny.
A driver of deforestation
Demand for RVs in the United States soared to a record during the pandemic, and now more than 8 million U.S. households have one.
Anna Montgomery, a landscape architect in Charleston, S.C., bought one for her family of four in 2020. Her 24-foot Winnebago Minnie-Winnie cost $77,000.
Montgomery said she had spent years researching the vehicles, dropping in on RV shows and dealerships to look at the materials. But she did not know that her vehicle may have deforested timber.
“It wasn’t anything that I had thought about,” Montgomery said of her RV purchase. “Here I am thinking, I got a good RV, but what is the reality of it?”
Last year, around tens of thousands of trees were felled in Indonesia to supply the construction of RVs in America, according to Earthsight. All of those trees were from rainforests, and most of the logging was approved by authorities.
Several conservation groups have concluded that the RV industry is now the biggest user of tropical plywood in the United States. Earthsight and Indonesia-based Auriga Nusantara shared government documents and shipping records showing how deforested wood travels from Indonesian rainforests to America’s RV makers.
It is unclear whether the RV industry was aware of the origins of the wood.
Barbara Kuepper, a supply chain expert at Profundo, a Dutch nonprofit, also reviewed Earthsight’s findings. “The RV industry stands out,” she said, for its role in overall U.S. demand for lauan.
A sacred forest
Most of the logging in Indonesia has been authorized by the government, which owns all the land in the country and gives concessions to companies, sometimes taking land away from individuals.
While Indonesia has made a lot of progress in reducing deforestation, officials say they rely on cash crops to build the nation’s economy. In 2021, the environment minister said that the country’s development “must not stop in the name of carbon emissions.”
Many rainforests in Borneo are intertwined with bogs known as peatlands that hold enormous amounts of carbon. The recent deforestation has also destroyed thousands of acres of peatlands, making Indonesia one of the world’s largest emitters of greenhouse gases, though still far behind China and the United States.
The deforestation near Sungai Mata-Mata and two neighboring villages in 2023 and 2024 resulted in the total emissions of more than 250,000 tons of carbon dioxide, according to Satya Bumi, a nonprofit, or as much as what 50,000 cars emit in a year.
The logging was done by a company called PT Mayawana Persada, which was forbidden by law from clearing the adjoining peatlands. It erased a highly biodiverse rainforest and seeded an industrial acacia plantation.
While Mayawana had a concession of nearly 350,000 acres in West Kalimantan province, in western Borneo, it was required by law to notify residents of its plans — which residents said it did not.
Mayawana and Indonesia’s Environment Ministry did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
About a decade ago, Mayawana began clearing the land it was awarded, prompting an outcry from environmental groups. It razed nearly 100,000 acres, or about half the size of New York City, according to Mighty Earth, a global conservation group. Satellite imagery reveals the speed and scale of the deforestation in recent years.
Mayawana’s logging also upended a community 80 miles north of Sungai Mata-Mata village. Sabar Bubu is home to about 100 subsistence farmers on the western edge of Indonesian Borneo.
One morning last year, Andreas Ratius, the leader of the community and a Dayak Indigenous man, was harvesting leaves to feed his pigs. Above him, the soaring canopy formed a lattice of overlapping greens that filtered the sunlight. Bird calls echoed through the treetops.
For generations, the hamlet’s ethos has been to conserve this hilly forest that it considers sacred, Ratius said, adding, “Animals should not be disturbed. Large trees should not be cut down.”
But in 2020, Mayawana crews arrived and razed part of the hill.
Some residents of Sabar Bubu and nearby areas said they had been detained by the police for protesting against Mayawana and had lost their livelihoods because of the deforestation.
Maria Adoh had planted rubber trees over a decade on a 50-acre plot of land in the area. “It was all flattened,” she said, in tears. She now has to rely on odd jobs to make a living, she said, and sometimes earns nothing.
The meranti timber from Mayawana’s deforestation in 2023 ended up in the American RV industry’s supply chain, according to shipping records obtained by Earthsight.
From Indonesia to Indiana
For years, the Jayco Jay Flight has been the bestselling travel trailer in the United States, made by a subsidiary of Thor. Jayco’s website states that the Jay Flight uses lauan. One of Jayco’s key suppliers of lauan has been MJB Wood, a company based in Bristol, Ind.
Over the past two years, MJB Wood bought tens of thousands of feet of deforested plywood from Indonesia, including from a supplier that sells tropical hardwood from rainforests, the conservation groups said, citing shipping records. MJB Wood did not respond to a request for comment; the Indonesian supplier could not be reached.
Thor said it “does not have knowledge of wood being supplied to Jayco as a result of deforestation.”
In Sabar Bubu, Ratius, the chief, said that he remained worried about the future of the forest. Although the government ordered Mayawana to stop logging last year, he pointed out that the company’s permits had not been revoked.
He also said he wasn’t familiar with RVs, which were described to him as vehicles in which people can sleep, cook and relax. After seeing a picture of one, he laughed and shook his head.