The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) has expanded its Global Environmental Crime Tracker to include timber in response to a surge in cases that highlight the scale of illegal logging and timber trafficking worldwide, despite efforts by policymakers in the USA and EU to beef-up deforestation regulations.
Wood Central understands that the new module will allow researchers, journalists, regulators, and companies to more easily assess the scope and nature of timber‑related crime, identify hotspots, and monitor emerging trends. Timber now joins wildlife, plastic waste and refrigerant gases as one of the core crime categories tracked by the watchdog.
And EIA’s updated dataset highlights a series of timber‑related incidents that occurred last year:
- Illegal logging in Assam, India, continued to intensify, with frequent seizures of illicit teak and sal. Multiple reports alleged that Forest Department officials were complicit, including claims that one officer played a central role in an illegal logging network.
- In Cambodia, the Nature Lovers Youth Association used social media in October 2025 to expose an illegal timber‑transport operation, prompting authorities to intervene. The group later accused forestry officers of enabling ongoing forest crimes and threatened to publish the names of officials allegedly involved.
- A joint report by RimbaWatch and the Bruno Manser Fonds alleged widespread illegal logging, fraud, land‑rights violations and police intimidation linked to Malaysian companies and individuals operating in Papua New Guinea’s forestry sector.
- Belgium’s customs authorities reported 20 attempts to import illegal timber in 2025, primarily from India, the UAE and Cameroon, reinforcing the country’s role as a key entry point for illicit goods into the EU.
- The Forest Stewardship Council launched a new investigation in February 2025 into non‑certified Burmese teak being traded by certificate‑holders outside their approved scope, expanding a 2022 probe to include the United States, Asia‑Pacific, Denmark and Italy.
The new tracker comes after EIA’s revealed to Wood Central that vast quantities of illegally sourced Ipê and Cumaru are being stripped from remote parts of the Amazon and smuggled into Western markets — particularly Europe and the United States — where tropical hardwoods continue to be used in luxury hotels, premium decking, high‑end flooring and even Formula One race infrastructure.
Detailed in a 27‑page report, Bootleggers, Brokers and Buyers, EIA has compiled the most comprehensive evidence to date showing how ‘tainted timber’ is taken from Indigenous land and laundered through a network of sawmills and exporters before entering global supply chains disguised as legal wood.
“The failure of EU and U.S. authorities to enforce laws prohibiting the import of illegal timber is driving fraud, rainforest destruction, and the invasion of Indigenous land in the Brazilian Amazon,” according to Rick Jacobsen, EIA’s US Senior Manager for Commodities Policy. “What we are seeing is a system designed to fail,” Jacobsen added. “The controls that should prevent illegal timber from entering the market are either not functioning or not being enforced.”
