Wagons brimming with logs accumulate in the Siberian railway station of Dalnerechensk, more than 8,000km (4,971 miles) east of Moscow. They are waiting to cross the nearby Chinese border.
Once in China, they will be processed and used for construction or turned into garden furniture and other products to be sold in European and US shops.
More than a third of all Russian logs are smuggled by mafias, a practice that doubled between 2005 and 2007, according to official figures... [Continue]
Lusaka, Zambia - Zambia lost an estimated K80 billion in uncollected timber revenues following government's decision to ban timber exports to member countries of the Southern African Development Community (SADC).
According to details released here by the Timber Producers Association of Zambia (TPAZ) the ban on timber exports has resulted in rampant smuggling of sawn timber, logs and other wooden products... [Continue]
Brazil - Secom-MT reported that the Web Forest Planet Institute (IWP), located in Brasilia, has developed a system which could thwart illegal logging in the State of Mato Grosso. The software utilizes chips inserted in trees for electronic monitoring and tracking. The project proposal for using the chip was sent to the Brazilian Senate as an alternative method used to control deforestation... [Continue]
Washington, USA - The International Wood Products Association (IWPA), an international trade association representing the North American imported wood products industry, recently praised a compromise provision to combat illegal logging as part of the Farm Bill adopted by Congress.
The provision targets illegal logging by amending the Lacey Act Amendments of 1981 to extend protections to plants illegally harvested outside the United States... [Continue]
Septer Manufandu, from Indonesia, is a man on a mission - he wants to stop Kiwis from buying kwila.
At a public meeting in Ponsonby tonight, the campaigner against deforestation in Indonesia's West Papua region is hoping to win over Aucklanders to join his fight to preserve the culture of his people by boycotting the illegally logged timber... [Continue]
Forest Watch Ghana (FWG), the umbrella body of civil society organizations operating in the forestry industry has pointed out that state complicity is to blame for massive corruption in the country's timber sector.
"Out of 600 timber concessions, only five meet the requirements for timber license and I have always maintained that 100% of all the timber that leave the shores of Ghana are illegal; and in all these the State is an accomplice in the massive corruption," says Mr... [Continue]
With world leaders ready to nut out Kyoto's successor, corruption in Indonesian forestry is a huge challenge.
Lashed together four abreast, a raft of illegal logs seems to take forever to snake down a winding, peat-stained stream in Borneo. More than 100 metres wide and guided with a pole by a sullen logger, it drifts through a tropical peat forest, past ramshackle logging camps, the silence broken by a distant chainsaw buzz and occasional tree fall... [Continue]
