Poachers illegally harvest burls by cutting them off living trees, an act that can seriously injure or even kill the tree over time.
A burl is a naturally occurring growth on a tree, often appearing as a rounded, knotted protrusion on the trunk, branches, or roots. Unlike the smoother contours of typical tree growth, a burl is formed when the tree undergoes stress from injury, virus, fungus, or insect infestation. This disruption causes the wood grain to grow in a chaotic, interlocked manner rather than in the straight lines seen in regular wood.
I watched this star-studded Warner Brothers Picture Company 1995 movie Outbreak on AMC. It is a Wolfgang Peterson film (The Neverending Story, Enemy Mine, Shattered, In the Line of Fire, Air Force One, The Perfect Storm, Troy, Poseidon) which he was also executive producer and director. The movie is based on Richard Preston’s 1994 nonfiction book “The Hot Zone”. In 1967 a virus infects a whole town in the African Jungle.
