BERNE — Musical instruments with quality sound can have stratospheric prices. Not least of which among their materials is the rare wood from the endangered African Blackwood tree.

To protect the African Blacwood from overharvesting, Michelle Von Haugg, a clarinetist who graduated from Berne-Knox-Westerlo, started Clarinets for Conservation. The not-for-profit is now in its fourth year and has developed into a music education organization, hosting teachers from the United States, while also promoting conservation education and planting blackwood trees in Tanzania.

Clarinets for Conservation is up for a grant, which it can win only if enough people vote for it online this month.

The dense core of the blackwood tree — mpingo in Swahili — has been harvested, carved, and laquered to become part of many non-brass, Western musical instruments in the world. A slow-growing tree that can’t be harvested until it is 70 to 100 years old, the blackwood — sometimes found in the pipes of bagpipes and the body of a clarinet or oboe ­— is prized for its resonance and tone. In some of the 26 African countries that the tree grows, it is used for animal food, carved ornaments, medicine, and fuel, according to the Global Trees Campaign.

A locally based Clarinets for Conservation could use the money to bring instruments that use blackwood to 30 students in the Korongoni Secondary School in Moshi, Tanzania, the birthplace of the African Blackwood tree.

Clarinets for Conservation is in the running for a $10,000 grant that would use $1,000 to pay for seedlings, $5,000 for the transportation of instruments from the United States to Tanzania, $3,000 for food and transportation for students planting trees, and $1,000 for teaching materials.

The money is awarded based on online voting at causes.kindsnacks.org. Awarded every month, the grants come from KIND, a company that produces healthy snacks.

— Marcello Iaia