Illegal logging in the Amazon jumped by 19% over the past year, according to a new report. Between August 2022 and July 2023, some 126,000 hectares, or 311,000 acres, of forest were cleared illicitly, equivalent to cutting timber from 350 football fields every day without environmental authorization. Experts point to a troubling shift: as illegal logging soars, legal timber extraction is declining, meaning that the percentage of illegal wood leaving the Amazon is increasing. “With predatory logging, the removal of timber leaves more openings and much more degradation,” said Leonardo Sobral, forestry director at the Institute for Forest and Agricultural Management and Certification (Imaflora), one of the Brazilian nonprofits behind the report. “Sustainable forest management, on the other hand, is planned, minimizing the impact and making it much harder to detect in satellite images.” Sustainable forest management in the Brazilian Amazon limits logging to three to five trees per hectare (about one to two per acre), enforcing strict rules on tree selection, timing and methods. But legal operations are often used to launder illegal wood from surrounding areas. Hardly any noncertified wood is sold commercially, in both domestic and international markets. Satellite images show that a third of all tropical wood felled over the last two to three years was sourced from illegal origins, the report highlighted, reaching 35% in the 2022-2023 period. About 8% of Brazil’s Amazonian timber is exported. Of this, 48% goes to Europe and 20% to the United States. Illegal loggers not only degrade the forests…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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