Logging off

The World Bank estimates the value of the global illegal timber trade at more than $10 billion per year. Tracking the timber supply chain is poor and allows widespread illegal logging, log smuggling and log laundering, it believes. Timber taken from remote forests in Asia, Russia, South America and Africa is often shipped long distances and its only certification is a paper trail that is highly open to fraud. Illegal logging can generate substantial profits — just one tree can be worth up to $2,000 — with little risk to the loggers, conservationists argue. Between 2006 and 2008, out of almost 600 illegal-logging cases brought to court in Indonesia, only two people received significant jail terms, and these were relatively low-level operators, according to the Indonesian forestry ministry. Importing countries have been slow to react to the trade. The first legislation was put in place only in December last year when the US required importers to declare the country of origin of imported wood products in an effort to outlaw the import of illegally gathered timber and products made from it. But with the weakness in the certification system, the new US law will be hard to enforce. A new Singapore-based company called Double Helix Tracking Technologies (DHTT) is aiming to use DNA analyses to help determine timber origins. It is developing the first bio-geographic database for a vulnerable species of tree found in southeast Asia — the Merbau. The company, alongside developing the database, is working with outside geneticists to improve methods of extracting DNA from wood products. Using DNA data " we can identify genetic differences between individual trees… and map out these changes according to their geographic location in a database. It will be possible to match even the degraded DNA found in processed wood products against the database to determine its true origin, " says Kevin Hill, chief executive officer of DHTT. Features " We will make it easy and affordable for the industry to verify the origin of their timber supplies and for law-enforcement agencies to conduct spot checks on timber imports, " he says. Indonesia has the most extensive rainforests in Asia, third in size to The illegal removal and sale of tropical timber is one of the most damaging environmental problems, but a company has developed DNA techniques it hopes will better track trees' provenance. Nigel Williams reports.