Illegal Timber Trade News

t age 70 Ngai Mutuoboro may not possess the vibrancy of his youthful days, but he can still pack a punch when it comes to environmental conservation. The elder from…

Several members of an illegal logging gang in Peru were reportedly arrested last Friday in Ucuyali, an inland region located in the Amazon rainforest. According to reports, a joint action…

Harold Clause Kupers, a wood buyer and mill owner in Washington state who pled guilty last November to violating the Lacey Act, has been sentenced to prison time. This is…

Eleven West African countries have come together and agreed to take collective action to curb illegal rosewood logging and trade in response to a quickly developing crisis. Several species of…

Other stories in Mongabay’s series on the Maya Biosphere Reserve: Successes and many challenges in Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve Communities lead the way in rainforest conservation in Guatemala Controversial park…

After snowballing for years and culminating in a peak of nearly a million cubic meters of wood smuggled in 2014, the illegal timber trade between Myanmar and China appears to…

The theft of bigleaf maple to feed the demand for rare tonewoods used by musical instrument makers has been a persistent problem in the U.S. Pacific Northwest for years, but…

An Indonesian police officer convicted of illegal logging and money laundering is on the run from the law — again. The convicted officer, Labora Sitorus, was originally charged in early…

In 2013, the European Union enacted the EU Timber Regulation law (EUTR) to help stem the tide of illegally sourced timber into EU states. But a recently released report by…

Over the past few years, West Africa has become one of the largest tropical log exporting regions feeding the growing demand for luxury furniture in Southeast Asia. Demand is booming…

Last week in Geneva, the Standing Committee of the Convention on International Trade and Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) decided to extend an international embargo on the…

This week, the 66th Standing Committee of the Convention on International Trade and Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) is meeting in Geneva, and multiple countries are calling…

Editor’s note (22-Jan-2016): An earlier version of this story contained several errors that have now been corrected. See the end for a summary of the changes. n September 2015, a…

China is the largest global consumer of rosewood and skyrocketing demand over the past decade and a half is having serious repercussions for some of the world’s most endangered old-growth…

A boat carries freshly-cut logs along the Tambopata River in Perú. Photo by George Powell. “We will keep working on these operations [such as 'Operación Amazonas']," said to Mongabay a Peruvian government…

In a Q&A with WildTech, Meaghan Parker-Forney of the World Resources Institute discusses the illegal timber trade, tree DNA and the barcode of life.

However, supporters of the FLEGT Action Plan say the review was overly critical.

Sieng Darong, a Forestry Administration ranger, and Sab Yoh, a police officer, were shot and killed while patrolling a protected forest in Cambodia on Saturday morning. A third ranger wounded…

A recent report details the extent at which the Southeast Asian nation is felling its forests, primarily due to demand from neighboring countries.

A judge in Norfolk, Virginia accepted a plea deal today in which Lumber Liquidators agreed to pay more than $13 million in fines and penalties for violating the Lacey Act,…

Last week, the largest hardwood flooring retailer in the United States, Lumber Liquidators, plead guilty to violating the Lacey Act and agreed to pay fines and penalties of more than…

An illegal timber trade has flourished for the past twenty years, extracting Myanmar’s frontier forests and taking them over land into China virtually unimpeded. A new report by the London-based…