- A new report from the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) estimates that about 94% of the wood for flooring and decking exported by Colombia between 2020 and 2023 lacked certification; about 20% of that wood went to the U.S., Canada and European Union countries.
- Local Afro-Colombian and Indigenous communities in the Atrato watershed in northwestern Colombia are both victims and perpetrators in the illegal timber trade, trapped in what the investigation describes as modern slavery conditions with few economic options as deforestation renders their land infertile.
- The EIA recommends that U.S. and EU importing companies ensure due diligence on their Colombian timber imports and that all their timber obtain proof of lawful and conflict-free origin.
- Community members in the Atrato Watershed call for a strengthening of local community efforts to support the development of alternative economies, and for a greater presence by the Colombian state to push back against the illegal armed groups.
BOGOTÁ — Logs float downstream in long lines on the murky waters of the Atrato River in the depths of the Pacific rainforests of Colombia’s Chocó department. With few roads, this region in northwest Colombia relies on waterways for transportation, though some are blocked by remnants of the logging industry. Towering trees and thick undergrowth line the river, but sections of the banks are stripped bare, exposing the earth.
A new investigation by the U.S.-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) reveals that most wood for flooring and decking from Colombia’s Pacific and Amazon forests, including the protected Dipteryx odorata (cumarú or choibá tree), is exported illegally. EIA’s “Decking the Forest” report exposes a long trail of irregularities across national wood companies, illegal armed groups, and companies in the U.S., the European Union, Canada and elsewhere. The report suggests that local Afro-Colombian and Indigenous communities are exploited, threatened, and left with few alternatives as their lands deteriorate under pressure from the illegal timber trade.
The EIA estimates that $24 million worth of processed timber exports between 2020 and 2023, including flooring and decking, lacked the required legal certification, citing export data from Colombian customs authorities and responses from local environmental authorities. This suggests that about 94% of such wood exports from Colombia during that period were illegal. About 20% of these exports were destined for the U.S., Canada and the EU. The report suggests that wood companies were allegedly forced to make payments to illegal armed groups in Chocó and Antioquia departments in return for those groups allowing the companies to operate. According to the EIA, only two exporting companies received certificates for decking and flooring exports during this period.
Timber traders typically request permits from regional environmental authorities to extract wood, which they then “harvest wherever they find it,” says one of the investigation’s authors, who asked to remain anonymous out of safety concerns. The wood is floated down the river to collection points, where official documents are generated. Logs left behind create further problems for locals who rely on the waterways for transportation.
Colombia is the world’s second most biodiverse country, with about 65% of its land covered by natural forest in 2020. Chocó and Antioquia have particularly biodiverse forests, but also account for about a third of the country’s timber transit. The 750-kilometer (404-mile) Atrato River starts in the Cerro Plateau in the western Andes and flows through Chocó. It’s one of more than 15 rivers and 300 streams feeding into the Atrato watershed, which spans 37,8000 square kilometers (14,600 square miles), covering 60% of Chocó department. About 85% of the population in Chocó is Afro-Colombian and about 12.7% is Indigenous.
Despite its natural wealth, Chocó is Colombia’s poorest department, where nearly 80% of the population lives below the poverty line. “This is an area that is completely abandoned by the state,” says Gimena Sánchez-Garzoli, director for the Andes at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), an advocacy organization for human rights in the Americas.
In 1993, Law 70 granted collective land rights to Afro-Colombians in Chocó, but around the same time, the region fell under paramilitary control, leading to widespread displacement. “Para-politicians,” local figures tied to illicit activities like gold mining and logging, infiltrated regional politics. Illegal logging has worsened ever since, according to Sánchez-Garzoli.
High environmental costs
Logging is a major driver of deforestation in Colombia’s Pacific and Amazon forests. According to the Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology and Environmental Studies, logging drives about 10% of Colombia’s deforestation. The destruction of forests triggers a cascade of environmental damages. “It leads to droughts and river sedimentation, ultimately drying them out,” says Vianney Enrique Moya Rua, political adviser to the social pastoral diocese of Quibdó, the capital of Chocó. “It also contributes to climate change.”
“When extraction happens, the territory begins to suffer,” says Samira Sánchez Mosquera, a community leader in Chocó’s Bojayá municipality, who spoke to Mongabay in an online call. Forests are crucial for maintaining healthy rivers and supporting wildlife and plant species that communities depend on. “The riverbanks are affected” by logging, she says. “The trees hold water so that our waterways don’t dry up.” Without them, Sánchez Mosquera says, both fish — the other main source of subsistence in her community after logging — and humans suffer.
“The destruction of species is displacing communities as they search for new lands,” Moya Rua says. He adds that it threatens local food supplies and “generates hunger.”
One of the timber species harvested from Colombia’s Pacific forests is cumarú, a dense and durable tropical hardwood that’s prized for use as flooring and decking. Trade in the species, often marketed as Brazilian teak, has been tightly regulated through Appendix II of CITES, the global wildlife trade convention, since November 2024, delayed by two years. The tree is vital for local ecosystems and species like the critically endangered great green macaw (Ara ambiguus); 87% of the bird’s active nests are found in cumarú trees.
However, tightening the cumarú trade via its inclusion in CITES Appendix II hasn’t stopped its illegal exploitation in Colombia. In an email response to Mongabay, the CITES Secretariat stated that it is “too early to say what impact the listing [of cumarú] will have”.
Manuel Rodríguez Becerra, Colombia’s minister of environment in the early 1990s who served as the national CITES authority, notes that while CITES has succeeded in protecting wild animal species, it’s “not had much success with the wood industry.” He says it’s very hard for an authority like CITES to prove that a certificate is invalid. According to the CITES response, CITES parties are required to submit annual reports on authorized and illegal trade of protected species, and in cases of unsustainable levels of trade or high levels of illegal international trade “this will be picked up and brought to the attention of the concerned Parties and procedures exist to support the Parties in ensuring long-term compliance.”
In an emailed response to Mongabay, one wood exporting company said it has temporarily stopped sourcing cumarú and is working closely with authorities to ensure traceability throughout its supply chain and to comply with all applicable environmental and forestry regulations. The company has also rejected the claims in the EIA report, stating that it has rigorously respected all the legal norms for buying, processing and exporting wood and that it maintains strict control of documents and traceability of its products.
Illegal logging takes a toll on communities in Chocó
Local communities in the Atrato watershed are both victims and perpetrators of illegal logging, according to sources consulted by Mongabay. “This has been a huge challenge. Our communities live from the wood,” says Sánchez Mosquera, the local community leader. She says logging and fishing are the only options for locals, but the former is destroying the latter. “They are just subsisting on whatever, for almost no money,” says Sánchez-Garzoli from the rights advocacy group WOLA. “They often don’t even see [logging] as illegal, it’s just the only thing that’s there.”
Locals in Chocó often fall into exploitative agreements with timber traders, surrendering land rights and working under conditions described in the EIA report as “modern slavery.” “The capacity to make informed deals is minimal. It is hard to fight information asymmetry when you only have fifth-grade education,” Sánchez-Garzoli says.
The investigation finds that some locals in Chocó are trapped in crushing debt for equipment and fees. “Some spend 10-20 years in debt of up to 30 or 40 million pesos [about $7,000-9,000]. They will never be able to pay back,” Sánchez Mosquera says.
The mindset of overexploiting forests comes from the outside, says Moya Rua. He explains that Afro-Colombian and Indigenous people have a special cosmovision that connects them with their territories. “We don’t share the extractive mentality, we only take from nature what we need, it’s a relationship based on respect for nature.” This changed with the arrival of businessmen and people from outside “with their capitalist, materialistic vision,” says Moya Rua, the political adviser.
Community efforts
Sánchez Mosquera is working to empower her community in Bojayá municipality by strengthening conservation and reforestation initiatives. She says she doesn’t oppose logging, “because people here depend on it to survive.” Instead, she focuses on creating better alternatives. “I prefer a more traditional approach,” she says, “where if one tree is cut down, another is reforested.” She adds that “we have to know how to make use of resources responsibly, we cannot be selfish.”
Glenis Esther Garrido Cossio, legal representative of the Upper Atrato Peasant Community Council (COCOMOPOCA), is working to help her community in Lloró municipality grow their own food as the timber industry has deforested their lands and eliminated other sources of food. She also leads environmental awareness training to help community members in Chocó better manage their land.
In 2020, the environmental group Wildlife Works began supporting the Atrato Baudó project in Lloró to create alternative livelihoods, such as growing grains and raising pigs. “This community lived exclusively off logging,” Garrido Cossio says. But community members were fed up with the work, which was poorly paid, dangerous and far from home. The project reduced logging by about 80% from 2022 to 2024, and now timber in this area is only harvested for subsistence, like building houses and canoes, Garrido Cossio says.
Garrido Cossio also wants to launch a project that teaches the community to use all parts of the tree, not just the trunk. “We should use everything from a felled tree,” she says.
Invaded by outside actors
Logging in Chocó is largely driven by businesses from the wealthier neighboring department of Antioquia. Sánchez-Garzoli says Chocó “has always been colonized by Antioquia.” These companies are more resourceful and sophisticated. “It’s all managed by companies from Antioquia or Cali [the capital of Valle del Cauca department],” Sánchez Mosquera agrees.
These national companies work with local actors, including armed ones. In a region where the state is largely absent, illegal armed groups like the National Liberation Army and the Gulf Clan are often the ones in control. The report describes how such illegal armed groups forcibly charge fees for timber shipments passing through their checkpoints and for allowing timber processing operations. “There is no state control there, the guerrilla is controlling” the Pacific, says Rodríguez Becerra, the former environment minister.
Armed groups are deeply integrated in society, operating undetected and living within the community hamlets of small wooden stilt houses, Sánchez-Garzoli says. They use a mix of treats and threats. They sweeten locals with candy, food and alcohol, which are expensive and hard to obtain in Chocó, but once community members start interacting with them, they cannot escape, Sánchez-Garzoli says.
These armed groups threaten, displace and even kill community leaders who stand in the way, according to several sources consulted by Mongabay. “As leaders, we have been threatened,” says Garrido Cossio, adding that she has also faced threats. The National Protection Unit, the state agency that’s meant to look after human rights defenders, offers some protection, but it’s often inadequate. Garrido Cossio describes receiving a bulletproof vest, and laughs it off: “Wearing it here would just make you more exposed. You learn to live with the fear, but it’s not easy,” she says.
The community members are mostly left to fight on their own. “There is no monitoring, it’s become too dangerous for the international community to be there,” Sánchez-Garzoli says.
The government doesn’t intervene; on the contrary, Moya Rua says, “The government is complicit … It works in favor of the interests of multinationals, and the political and business sectors.” He points out that the regional environmental authorities continue to hand out permits to illegal loggers.
In an emailed response to Mongabay, Andrés Esteban Ordóñez Perez, director of customs management at the National Tax and Customs Directorate, said his office had no record of cumarú timber exports being seized in 2024, and none so far in 2025.
At the end of the supply chain are foreign companies importing illegal Colombian wood. The EIA report says that between 2020 and 2023, 16 U.S. companies imported about $3.9 million worth of flooring and decking wood without a certificate. Despite possible violations of laws like the U.S. Lacey Act, which prohibits importing illegal timber, wood still finds its way into regulated markets, the investigation reveals. In countries without demand-side laws, like Mexico, there are no controls at all, says one of the report’s authors.
Moya Rua criticizes the international community’s double standard: while foreign governments support local communities and advocate for human rights, they fail to hold their own companies accountable for illegal logging. “We don’t see foreign governments punishing companies for violating the rules,” he says.
Ways forward
According to Rodríguez Becerra, the Chocó region urgently needs state presence and a robust security policy — something that Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s “total peace” strategy has failed to provide, he says. With continued control by illegal armed groups, it’s hard to ensure environmental protection. “This all wouldn’t have been so bad if the state had been present,” Rodríguez Becerra says.
Juan Miguel Vásquez, director of Colombia’s National Federation of Wood Industries (FEDEMADERAS), says the private sector must play a key role in legalizing Colombian timber. He says Colombia has vast potential, with 595,000 km2 (230,000 mi2) of forest — of which just 2,790 km2 (1,077 mi2) have management plans in the forest development hubs. Vásquez calls for government incentives to make legal forestry more competitive, such as reducing the forest compensation fees that communities pay the Colombian government for harvesting timber.
Colombian authorities are working to strengthen enforcement in the timber industry, with new regulation set to come into force this month requiring timber exporters to obtain an industry-issued shipment document. However, experts say compliance with the new regulation will be challenging.
The EIA report offers several recommendations for the governments involved and law enforcement agencies, including enforcing existing timber regulations, investigating companies linked to illegal activity, and implementing transparent digital traceability systems. It also suggests that the U.S. and EU strengthen due diligence on timber imports and provide Colombia with monitoring and enforcement support.
However, Sánchez-Garzoli remains skeptical of some of these proposals, saying that Chocó “isn’t there yet.” “There is no infrastructure of institutions, often there is not even any paper, no electricity,” she says. Instead, she advocates for prosecuting ties between military officials and illegal armed groups, noting that military personnel often allow these groups to pass freely through checkpoints. She points to similar cases in illegal palm oil production, where prosecuting military connections was key to progress. Ultimately, she says, “you need a state presence” and suggests that local communities need legal representation, citizen monitoring support, and more government involvement in their territories.
Community leaders agree. “What would be good is if we had control by competent authorities here,” Garrido Cossio says.
Banner image: One of the aggregation points where timber awaits motorboats for transport. This is where transport permits first appear. Image courtesy of EIA.
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