When a tree falls in a forest, even if no one’s around to hear it, it does in fact make sound. At least, that is, if the wood in that tree is destined to be molded into a guitar. A guitar’s sounds aren’t created by its strings, but by rather its wood—known as tonewood—that vibrates, thereby defining tone. Guitars, which last year accounted for about $1.2 billion in U.S. domestic retail sales, are made from the highest grade of the top 1 percent of all commercially available wood. As forests throughout the world are tapped out, however, reserves of these tonewoods—typically mahogany, maple, ebony, and rosewood—are diminishing.

Now, government agencies in the United States and around the world are getting serious about protecting what’s left of those threatened tree species. According to the UN Office of Drugs and Crime, richly hued rosewood is now among the world’s most overexploited and illegally trafficked resources—more than elephant ivory, pangolins, and rhino horn combined. Rosewood, native to the rainforests of Southeast Asia, Madagascar, and Brazil, is used to make not only musical instruments, but also to craft intricately carved luxury furniture in a traditional Chinese style called “hongmu.” And China, whose burgeoning middle class covets the deep red glow of hongmu pieces, during the first half of 2016 imported the equivalent of 350 “hongmu logs” per hour.

The plundering of rosewood forests for furniture is largely why stringent new international rosewood restrictions will go into effect on January 2. The rules will subject roughly 80 percent of the multibillion-dollar global rosewood trade to stricter regulations designed to promote sustainability—meaning guitar-makers, and to some extent musicians, will have to pay more attention to the origin of the wood in their instrument.

This isn’t the first time the guitar industry has come up against the U.S. Lacey Act, which bans trafficking in illegal wildlife and was amended to include plants, too, in 2008. Since then, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has twice raided Gibson warehouses and discovered that the manufacturer was making instruments from endangered and illegally imported ebony from Madagascar.

The Lacey Act also pertains to all plants protected by the Convention of the Trade in Endangered Species. CITES delegates have previously moved to protect specific varieties of rosewood, starting with Brazilian rosewood in 1992, and in 2013 those grown in Madagascar, where rampant logging was taking place. Beginning next Tuesday, the new rules will restrict the trade of an additional 300 rosewood species. The rules, says Rob Garner, a professional bass player and director of ForestBased Solutions, LLC, are “regulatory and administrative solutions” aimed to prevent further deforestation, and to provide legal and sustainable wood. “The communities where this timber is sourced will benefit from better forest management regimes that account for these species," he says. "Otherwise, labor communities can get exploited."

The new regulations mandate that commercial traders will need permits from both the country of origin and that of receipt, too, for products that contain any kind of rosewood. While some species of rosewood can still be traded, loggers will only be able to harvest it from designated sustainable forests. This is a big deal, considering acoustic guitars are a longtime and iconic U.S. export, and that several of them, according to Garner, contain many different species of CITES-regulated tonewoods.

Charles Barber, director of the World Resources Institute’s Forest Legality Initiative, says the guitar industry has become “collateral damage” of the illegal furniture market. “A lot of sustainability-concerned manufacturers already only source FSC [Forest Stewardship Council]-certified wood from small-scale forests; they’re the good guys,” Barber says. “There are some in the guitar industry using illegal wood, but they’re certainly not the drivers of the deforestation problem.”

As for musicians? As much as international boundaries tend to complicate commercial matters, concertgoers don’t have to worry that their favorite rock stars won’t be able to bring their favorite instruments abroad as a result of new restrictions. “As of right now, you are allowed to travel with a product made from restricted rosewood species, as long as it doesn’t exceed 10 kilograms, or about 22 pounds,” Garner says. “And typically, a guitar has just a couple pounds of rosewood, allowing the musician that plays it to travel freely.” So, while Bob Dylan could theoretically take a beloved guitar made from Indian rosewood on tour with him from New York to Japan to Europe, the new restrictions would preclude him from selling it to a top-bidding fan in say, Belgium, without a CITES permit, both from the country of origin (the U.S.), as well as from Belgium.

Things may get more complicated, however, for traveling orchestras. Susan Lieberman, vice president of international policy for the Wildlife Conservation Society, says groups traveling with a large amount of rosewood will have to seek special passports from both countries of origin and destination, but adds that there’s precedent for this. “For several years there have been restrictions on ivory, found in violin bows, piano keys, and more instrument features,” she explains. “The orchestra industry is used to permits and exemptions. Through Fish and Wildlife, the U.S. government has a history of working with musicians and instrument-makers to implement them.”

Still, the rosewood-dependent guitar industry has some soul-searching ahead. United States officials are already working with guitar manufacturers and industry associations to adapt to the changes “largely through presentations and webinars from U.S. Fish and Wildlife, whose agents will be enforcing the trade restrictions,” says Barber. Garner, however, says the private sector will necessarily have to become a “much more proactive stakeholder,” as new CITES regulations stand to affect guitar-makers economically and culturally. “Luckily, guitar-makers are one of the most visible and proactive industries when it comes to looking toward long-term sustainability management investments that involve the species they hold dear,” he says. “After all, they’ve successfully adapted to past restrictions in mahogany and other CITES-regulated species.”

Barber, however, worries that the rosewood issue’s inherent complexity could adversely affect guitar-makers. “A certain level of harvest doesn’t necessarily threaten rosewood, and not all species of it are actually threatened,” he explains. “However, they’re pretty hard to tell apart, so at this point, the only effective way to regulate its gross overharvesting seems to be to ban several species. So, there’s a concern that consumers will begin to think of rosewood like palm oil—all bad—because it’s easier than trying to distinguish between species.”

Another concern, Barber says, is that the new regulations will turn guitar-makers against CITES. “Given the importance of the rosewood listings for fighting the unsustainable and largely illegal trade in rosewood into China for furniture, it's important to find ways to help guitar-makers comply with CITES in a cost-effective manner; we don't want such companies to become adversaries of CITES timber listings,” he explains. “But if the rosewood restrictions become a bureaucratic nightmare, you might lose some of the progressive allies who were on your side—especially considering the fact we’re about to enter a pretty antiregulatory phase of government, and CITES and the Lacey Act could become targets of the Trump administration.”

The good news is, several forward-looking guitar manufacturers boast a long record of thinking and operating sustainably. Austin Clowes, a research assistant and tonewood specialist with the World Resources Institute, points to Bend, Oregon’s Bedell Guitars. “Bedell has a very innovative Seed-to-Song program, which traces every bit of the wood in a guitar,” he says. “They are also running a campaign against clearcutting in the Tongass National Forest in Southeast Alaska.” Clowes also says he believes Taylor Guitars, based in El Cajon, California, is well poised to address the tonewood issue, as it purchased an ebony mill in Cameroon and has proved proactive when it comes to responsible sourcing and enriching the local community. And then there’s the oldest guitar company in the U.S., Martin Guitars, in Nazareth, Pennsylvania. “They use a lot of FSC certification to ensure legality,” Clowes says.

As complex as the tonewood issue may be, the bottom line is, there’s plenty of precedent for whatever’s in store this year. “Most companies have very mature supply chains at this point,” says Garner, “and a very mature capacity for understanding the issues that face them. We will all try to adapt and implement the regulations until the next CITES conference in 2019, and at that point see whether some issues may need to be reexamined.”