Monday, October 06, 2008

Audio: Illegal Logging in the New Yorker

You may have already had a chance to see the fascinating article in last week's New Yorker about illegal logging, the Environmental Investigation Agency, product chain-of-custody and Wal-Mart.

Though the article itself is available by subscription only, you can listen to a fantastic interview with the author, Raffi Khatchadourian, HERE.

UDPATE 10/13: YOU CAN NOW READ THE FULL ARTICLE IN THE NEW YORKER HERE.

In May 2008, the United States Congress passed landmark legislation to address the U.S. market’s role in the global illegal logging crisis, becoming the first country in the world to ban the import of illegally harvested wood and wood products.

If you are interested in how these new amendments to the Lacey Act might affect your company, I suggest this FAQ developed by EIA as required reading. If you import any products or raw material coming from forest products, I suggest you had better be interested, as the penalties for noncompliance will be significant, and the issue is critically important for our economy and our environment.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I agree that the New Yorker wrote an interesting article. I did a post on the connection between illegal logging and deforestation building upon this New Yorker story (available at: http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/jschmidt/illegal_blogging_and_climate_change.html).