narrator: on this episode of "earth focus," the illegal lumber trade is a multi-million-dollar business spanning the globe. in the northwest united states, scientists are using innovative methods to stop lumber from enentering ththe country, w whin brazil, violent clashes have erupted at the source, where indigenous groups are trying to stop poachers from decimating their forest.

different announcer: "earth focus" is made possible in part by a grant from anne ray foundation, a margaret a. cargill philanthropy; the orange county community fououndation; and the farvue foundation. [pllaying blues music] man: big leaf maple guitars are most popular for sure because they have the ability to be very visually stunning, and no two pieces are going to be exacactly alike. it's like e a thumb prin. it's unique. it's a a signature. it's going to be its own unique being, and they'y're beautiful. this project i have here is a classiexample ofof the book-matched, what we e call "flame maple top." it's a gibson les paul, a and it just spepeaks volumes just right there. boom. the naturalal, slighthtly amber, clear allows that wood to just

be everything it's supposed to be, and it's just lovely, it's just lovely. i'm always going to make an efeffort--if i i have to outt and obtaiain wood, i'i'm cecertainly gogoing to wanant to obtaiain wood thahat is defininy known toto be, you k know, srcrd legally and sustainably. it makes perfect sense to me that in this day and age, if i need something that i don't have, i would absolutely just make sure that i'm working with reputatabe sourceses. woman: when people think of illegal logging, some of their first thohoughts would be thihig about boards, something kind off like this. this is dalbergia nigra. but in reaeality, illegal logging is also abouout things like this. this is a guitar back made ouout of dalbersia nigrara- brazilian rosewood--and it's considered to be one of the most endangered species of trees in the world. what i discovered in my early research is that illegal logging is kind of the monster in the closet that nobody talks about or even knows about. and i think thahat's an

issue that really needs to be tackled. i am a wood identificication techchnology spececialist andnd analyticacal cheemist forr the u.s. f forest service. i also help build the forerensic spectra of trees database that we house here at the lab. goddard: our laboratory is the only full-servivice crime lab fr wildlife in the world. trees as a forest represent a habitat. when criminals go in and clear-cut a forest, they not only take down trees, but the animals that live in that habitat may go to extinction. likke any other police c crime , we examine evidence andnd, in a triangngular fashion, we attttet to link suspecect, victim, and crime scene with that evidence. lancaerer: if you l look at data provided by f,f, global witness, andnd eia, you u find thatat noy arare we gogoing into a record-breaking year of land defenders s murdered to o protet their forest and environment, the u.s. economy is depressed by about $1 million due to illegal

logging imports, and illegal lologging is the e third-largest trans-s-national crime. goddard: a tree, in fact, is more complex than we know. it has more chromosomes than we hahave. it can easily b be a vim because it may be illegegal to take e that specicies, dependinn what genus and spececies it i ir whehere it's located.d. lancncaster: trees can be e poad just as any sort of traditional wildlife can be poached. if you can't identify y it, you u can't protect it, and s so our goal is really to devevelop a database that can be used, hopefully one day, by anybody inin the w worln order to do this sort of ididentificatation to hp themem fight illegal logging. huff: a lot of cases we've had, it's very difficult to prove that wood was o obtained illegay once it gets processed in a mill or o once it's removoved fm

the national forest. basically, we have a stump and we have wood. it was very difficult to tie that wood right back to the forest where it came from, to knoow that it came fromom a duff site and tracking the wood from the forest to a mill to be processed and placed into commerce. man:n: yeah, witithout a sususpr ananything, i i didn't think t e was muchch of a case here. yeah, this tree right here. so i was driving by, and i saw, you know, back then it was--there wasn't as much vegetation, and i could d see the sasawdust everywhere. i was looking for people stealing firewood bececae we h had some trees in thihis aa tthat were e cut for fifirewoodi saw this and i saw a lot of the tree still there, so i knew it wasn't, you know, someone just stealing firewood, so got out to ininvestigate and, yeah, i found these blocks and there was a lot of sawdust everywhere. found the tree hatcheted back there, and this was my y first real encounr wwith maple theft. huff: there's a lot of value, especially in n trees likeke thg

leaf m maple that t are used f r real speciaialized purprposes. there's a pretty high value, often in the music wood industry.y. larson: so i was digging around. i noticed they stripped the bark off here, and then you can see this marbled texture. huhuff: in general, we'll seeee areas that poachers will come and check individual trees in an area.a. they'll take the bark o, they'll lolook for the figuring, the rippled d effect rigight undderneath the bark, anand then they'y'll find the right tree ad take that tree. so this area iss fairlrly represenentative of f f sisite that we see nonormally ie forest. so having a d database for anyny species with timbmber is gogoino help invnvestigationons in the fufuture because it enables us o take a piece of evidence that we suspect has beenen stolen anandn trtrace it t back actctually toc lands, to a stump o on the fore. goddard: we have to figure out what the victim is in terms of species. it may be legal to kill a certatain specieies or perfefy illegal, dependnding on its gens and itsts species. we can ananae the dna of f a tree, then we can

extract dna from that plank, which is alll we need to examine the oils toto determine this ges and species. . we are the first crimime lab everer to have a a xylarium,m, where we use the k n samples s to identifify wood evidedence. lancaster: so a xylarium is for wood whaa library y is for books. it's where wewe house all the different wood blocks that allow us to look at reference material when we get a new sample. and soso, if we get an unknknown and we haven n idea of what it is, we can build a popopulation b based on what wee here. there are wood cocollectis all over the world, and we partner with a lot of them in order to build what you see here. we have probably close to or over 15,000 different wood blocks s or slivers in this r r, and that really encompasses an incredible portion of commercial woods that are imported into the united states. wowoman: i'm an adventure scientist, which means i'm a

volunteer. we help collect data. at this moment, we're collelectg samples for the timber tracking project that will hopefully lead to help convict poachers of, you know, illegal timber logging. man: i grew up in brazil, and my dad, he was an ecocological person, so he gave me this awareness to take care of nature. so, to me, it was my niche. i lovove it. right here. close this. now i have my tool. i'm going to find a place, kind of here, in between. lancaster: the adventure scientists are taking on this incredible role of trying to collecect high-valueue referenee samples for scientists like me. gisele: they train us volunteers to collect samples, and we're collectining the core of the tr.

and the core, they're going to do a chememical composition too later on be able to match it, see if it's possisible to matatt to the leaves. hopefully it will lead to help stop poaching. renee: going to insert this here to fit the core. and there we haveve the core. insert it. gisele: ok, this goes in our desiccant bag. lancaster: and now just unpackaging the wood core, sitting in a bed of desiccant. so we remove the core from the straw. i cut a small portion off just the end. it's that small disc. from ththere, we make fine

slivers out of the sections in order to maximize whahat the sample can do. we e use direct analysis in real time, time-of- flightht mass specec to look ate chemotypypes of trees. and jujut lika a fingerprint t can identiy individual humumans, a chehemoty can i identify individual s spe. if the ininformation n is vidatd and stands in consensnsus, it wl be integrated with our forest database. thehe datasase allowss to providede information to laww enforcement, where they can determine if something has beben done illegally, whether that's import wood shipmentnt or a wood proroduct under falsese declaran or witutut completee cecertification. and so our goal is rereally to dedevelop a dadae that c can be useded hopefullyle day by anybobody in n the worldn order to do this sort of identification to helththem fight illelegal logging. goddard: i love what i'm doing because we are a laboratory that suppoports wildlilife law

enfoforcement atat the localal,, federal, and intnternationalal levels. nothing like this has ever been done before. it is so ssatisfying to set something l e this toto motion.n. huff: it definitetely has a majr role, i think,k, in future investigationsns. and it's definitely made our work a lot easier, but it certainly adds to the overall investigation success rate. gisele: i think one of the results of this projeject and of volunteering for it will really resonate with u us the day thate hear r of a conviction of a logr being done because they matched a sample that we collected. spalding: there's a lot t of demand d for this w wood, and us it's sourced in a way that's renewablble and consciously managed, you knowow, eventually the risk is, of course, an

imminent loss of that resource and dwindling of supply. otherwise, it's going to disapappear, and d that wouldldy be a t true crime.e. woman: scientists at the u.s. fish and wildlife laboratory in oregon hope forensics will one day help stop the importing of illlegal lumbeber. meanwhihile,n brazil's maranhao state, indigenous communities have formed citizizen patrols too protect the forest from tree poachers. [indistinct chatter]

announcer: "earth focus" is made possible in part by a grant from anne ray foundation, a margaret a. cargill philanthropy; the orange county community foundation; and the farvue foundation.

05/05/20 05/05/20 democracy now! test [captioning made possible amy goodman: from new york, the epicenter of the pandemic, this is s democracacy now! nonoam chomsky: we have a tototy dysfunctional gogovernment which is causing enormous problems. it is not t that nothingng was knknown. the pandemic wasas anticipated. his reaction was to o cut back preparatitions. amy odmaman: how d did the united states, the richest country in the world,