Ipe and Cumaru After CITES: Current Prices, Paperwork, and Alternatives Compared
Ipe and Cumaru After CITES: Current Prices, Paperwork, and Alternatives Compared - A step into the workshop.
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You're standing at the rack at a hardwood dealer, holding a 5/4x6 ipe board heavy enough to make you regret grabbing it one-handed, and the tag says nine bucks a foot. Two years ago that board was the default answer for anything that had to live outside in Texas. Now the guy at the counter is talking about CITES, permits, and how he can't promise the next bundle.
Here's what changed, what it costs you, and what I'd build with instead.
What the Rule Does and Doesn't
On November 25, 2024, the CITES Appendix II listings for ipe (the genera Handroanthus, Roseodendron and Tabebuia) and cumaru (Dipteryx) entered into force. That date comes from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, which told its ports to hold any shipment arriving without CITES documents pending paperwork from the exporting country. The vote came at the CITES meeting in Panama in November 2022 with a 24-month runway, and per ATIBT the United States opposed both listings.
Appendix II is not a ban. FWS's own factsheet says so: not a list of endangered species, not a boycott. It means the exporter needs a CITES export permit for every shipment, backed by findings that the harvest doesn't hurt the species and the wood was legally acquired. The listing carries annotation #17, which per CITES Notification 2024/116 covers logs, sawn wood, veneer sheets, plywood and transformed wood. Decking, furniture blanks, all of it.
Brazil runs two tracks under that notification. Timber cut before November 24, 2024 from an area under a forest management plan gets a pre-Convention certificate. Timber cut on or after November 25 needs a full export permit, and that only issues if Brazil's scientific authority signs off.
Your Paperwork: None
You, the walk-in buyer, file nothing.
FWS states that Appendix II requires an export permit from the shipping country but no import permit unless national law demands one, and U.S. law doesn't. The Congressional Research Service is blunter: a CITES permit is not required for domestic trade within a party nation.
The one federal form in play is the Lacey Act declaration, PPQ Form 505, and Arnold & Porter is clear that the importer files it, not the buyer. Phase VII of Lacey, effective December 1, 2024, covers essentially all imported wood.
Existing decks and furniture are untouched. Robi Decking put it plainly: the listing applies to new international trade, not material already in circulation. And if you're down my way, Mason's Mill & Lumber in Houston announced in May 2025 that it was holding a large CITES-compliant inventory of both species with full documentation. Dealers who stocked deep before the deadline are the ones still selling.
Who Actually Quit
Depends who you ask, and nobody has a count.
Brazilian Wood Depot's summer 2025 market update said up to 80 to 90 percent of previous ipe suppliers "may" stop exporting, that many U.S. suppliers had already run dry with backorders stacking up, and that prices would likely stay volatile into 2026. That's one dealer's forecast, and they hedged it.
The hard datapoint is from J. Gibson McIlvain in April 2025: Brazil's IBAMA announced reductions of CITES exports on some concessions. Then Ipe Woods USA, in a December 2025 release, described the arc as early-2025 export activity falling, prices peaking mid-2025, and conditions stabilizing since.
So the honest version: supply tightened and prices spiked in the first half of 2025, then settled at a higher floor. Wood Vendors still marks its 4/4 ipe "Limited Supplies" this August and says it has gotten progressively harder to source. Nobody's quoting cheap ipe again.
On the Rack Today
Material only, per linear foot, from dealer store pages this year. Skip the blog posts; Advantage Lumber's "how much does ipe cost" article still shows 1x6 at $3.09, less than half its store price of $7.32.
| Species, size | Price/LF | Dealer |
|---|---|---|
| Ipe 1x6 | $5.50–8.00 | Brazilian Wood Depot, March 2026 bulletin |
| Ipe 1x6 | $7.32 | Advantage Lumber store |
| Ipe 1x6 | $6.99 sale / $7.70 | Hardwood Decking Supply |
| Ipe 5/4x6 | $6.99–9.03 | BWD, Advantage |
| Cumaru 1x6 | $3.59–3.89 | Hardwood Decking Supply |
| Cumaru 1x6 | $4.20 | Advantage Lumber |
| Cumaru 1x6 | $3.99–4.59 | Brazilian Wood Depot |
| Cumaru 5/4x6 | $5.27 | Advantage Lumber |
Cumaru is the quiet winner. Most 1x6 cumaru SKUs the dealers list sit between $3.59 and $4.59, and Advantage sells a B-grade random-length 1x6 at $2.88.
For furniture stock instead of decking, Wood Vendors lists 4/4 kiln-dried ipe at $21 a board foot in 100-board-foot lots, and 4/4 cumaru at $9.95. That gap is the whole story. Same weight class, cumaru at 3,330 Janka against ipe's 3,490 per the Wood Database, both at 65 to 68 pounds a cubic foot, which is to say you'll hate carrying either one.
One caution I won't skip: Scheffer & Morrell's worldwide durability checklist lists Dipteryx odorata twice, rated very resistant by one study and nonresistant by another. Neither cumaru nor garapa appears in the USDA Wood Handbook's decay table at all. Ipe does, as very resistant. Dealers claim 50-plus years for cumaru. Nobody has published the test.
The Bench
Garapa (Apuleia leiocarpa) isn't CITES-listed and isn't on the IUCN list, per the Wood Database. Hardwood Decking Supply has 1x6 at $1.99 and 5/4x6 at $2.59; Advantage is $3.19 and $4.10; BWD's bulletin says $3.80 to $4.60. Janka 1,650. The Wood Database calls it durable but vulnerable to termites, which in Texas is not a footnote. Dealers claim 25 to 45 years.
Black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) is the domestic answer and the one I like best on paper. Wood Handbook Table 14-1 puts it in the very resistant class alongside ipe, the class the handbook says holds up in ground contact. Janka 1,700. The catch is supply. Robi Decking lists 1x6 at $6.99 and 5/4x6 at $8.30, kiln-dried to 12 percent, in lengths of only 3 to 12 feet. Midwest Black Locust starts non-standard-grade 5/4 decking at $3.00 a foot and rough lumber at $2.50 a board foot. Alderfer Lumber shows decking at $4.90 a foot with every size sold out. Short boards and thin inventory, but for a bench or table those short lengths are what you'd cut anyway.
White oak has no decking SKU that I know of. Wood Vendors sells 4/4 flat-sawn kiln-dried rough at $9.25 a board foot in small lots, about $4.63 per foot of 6-inch width before milling and sapwood cull. The Wood Handbook rates it resistant, fine above ground, and Highley's 22-year USDA field test in Wisconsin gave white oak heartwood an estimated 30-year service life.
Western red cedar is cheap and light: Twin Creeks sells knotty inland 5/4x6 at $3.25 a foot, Pergola World's boards work out to roughly $2.63 to $3.18, and BWD's bulletin says $3.89 to $4.75. Janka 350, so a chair leg dents if you look at it hard. The Highley test is the number that matters: cedar heartwood lasted over 30 years, cedar sapwood failed at 11. Knotty deck boards carry sapwood.
And since I'm loyal to what grows here: mesquite sits in the Wood Handbook's resistant column with the cedars and white oaks. Heavy, twisted, priced like a hobby, and still the right material for a Texas tabletop more often than the import is.
Cost Per Decade, Fine Print Included
Take the 1x6 price, divide by service life in decades, assume one replacement when the board dies. Material only, no finish, fasteners or labor. My arithmetic on dealer and USDA inputs.
| Species | $/LF used | Life used | $/LF per decade |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ipe | $5.50–8.00 | 40–75 yr (dealer) | $0.73–2.00 |
| Cumaru | $3.59–4.59 | 40–75 yr (dealer) | $0.48–1.15 |
| Garapa | $1.99–3.80 | 25–45 yr (dealer) | $0.44–1.52 |
| Black locust | $4.90–6.99 | 25–40 yr (dealer) | $1.23–2.80 |
| White oak, rough | ≈$4.63 | 30 yr (Highley) | ≈$1.54 |
| Cedar, all heart | $2.63–4.75 | >30 yr (Highley) | $0.88–1.58 |
| Cedar, with sapwood | $2.63–4.75 | 11 yr (Highley) | $2.39–4.32 |
Read that with both eyes open. Every tropical lifespan is a dealer claim. The white oak and cedar numbers are the only ones from a published field test, and that test ran in Wisconsin, a moderate decay climate. The Wood Handbook's own footnote says resistance may drop in warm, humid conditions, and Highley noted that thick untreated Douglas-fir planks in southern Mississippi lasted about 12 years while small crosses of the same wood up north went 20-plus. Houston is Mississippi, not Madison. Shave every one of those lifespans in your head.
What I'd Buy
If you already lean on ipe and don't mind $7 a foot, it's still legal, still stocked at dealers who bought deep, and you sign nothing. Ipe Woods USA says pricing looks steady into 2026. I'd believe steady before I'd believe cheap. I'd also remember the Wood Database lists ipe as endangered on the IUCN Red List, whatever CITES calls it.
For most outdoor furniture, buy cumaru. It's on the rack at $4, same weight class, and at a bench's scale the CITES status is the importer's headache. Just know its durability record is dealer talk and one checklist that can't agree with itself.
If you'd rather not fund the tropical trade at all, black locust is the honest domestic equal, and short lengths are a furniture builder's friend, not a problem. Find a mill that actually has stock before you draw the plans, because Alderfer is sold out and Robi's 1x6 stops at 12 feet.
Cedar only if it's all heart and the piece never touches dirt. Otherwise you're counting football seasons, not decades.