[anodyne33]

> It being hard to track is no excuse.

Indeed. I have a good buddy who is inside council for a really visible guitar company. One of his main functions is tracking the provenance of any endangered hardwoods that go through the factory. From what I've been told there's a pretty big paper trail to document the date and place where "x" piece of Brazilian Rosewood or Ebony was harvested, but the penalty if they were to be caught building guitars from restricted or endangered wood is steep.

Maybe it wouldn't do much to dissuade the primary purchasers of cobalt, but a federal regulation popping them for a few million bucks for buying what essentially amounts to "blood diamonds" certainly wouldn't hurt the cause.