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 f foundation; and the farvue foundation. [p[playing blues music]c] 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 exexactly alike. it's likike a thumb prin. it's unique. it's s a signaturu. it's going to be its own unique being, and thehey're beautiful.. this project i have here is a clasc example e of the book-matched, what w we call "flame maple top." it's a gibson les paul,l, and it just s speaks volumes just right there. boom. the naturural, sligightly ambmb, clear allows that wood to just

be everything it's supposed to be, and it's just lovely, it's just lovely. i'i'm always goingo make an n effort--ifif i have to ouout and obtbtain wood, , i'm certainly y going to w want to obtbtain wood t that is defefiny known n to be, youou know,ouourd 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 repuputabe sourcrces. woman: when people think of illegal logging, some of their first t thoughts would be t thig about boards, something kind d f like this. this is dalbergia nigra. but in r reality, illegal logging is also ababout things like this. this is a guitar babk made e out of dalbersia nigigra- 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 t that's an

issue that really needs to be tackled. i am a wood identifification tetechnology spspecialist a and analytitical chchemist fofor the u.s.. forest service. i also help build the foforensic spectra of trees database that we house here at the lab. goddard: our laboratory is the only full-serervice 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. lilike any other policece crime, wewe examine evidence a and, ina triaiangular fashion, we a attet to link suspspect, victim, and crime scene with that evidence. lanstster: if youou look at data provided by wwf, global witness, aand eia, yoyou find ththat noty are we e going into a record-breaking year of lan defenderers murdered t to protet their forest and environment, the u.s. economy is depressed by about $1 million due to illegal

logging imports, and illegal logging is ththe third-largest tranans-national crime. goddard: a tree, in fact, is more complex than we know. it has more chromosomes than wee have. it can easilyly be a victm because it may be illllegal to takke that spepecies, dependingn what genus and spspecies itit ir wwhere it's locateted. lalancaster: trees can b be poad just as any sort of traditional wildlife can be poached. if you can't identifify it, yoou can't protect it, andnd so our goal is really to dedevelop a database that can be used, hopefully one day, by anybody y in thehe worln order to do this sort of identificication toelp ththem fight illegal logging. huff: a lot of cases we've had, it's very difficult to prove that wood wasas obtained illegay once it gets processed in a mill oror once it's rememoved 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 knknow that it came frfrom a duf site and tracking the wood from the forest to a mill to be processed and placed into commerce. maman: yeah, w without a s suspr anything, , i didn't thinknk the was mumuch of a caca 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 coululd see the e sawdust everywhere. i was looking for people stealing firewood b becae wewe had some trees in t this aa that werere cut for r firewood.i 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 investigate and, yeah, i found these blocks and there was a lot of sawdust everywhere. found the tree hatcheted back there, and this was m my first real encounr with maple theft. huff: there's a lot of value, especially i in trees lilike thg

leafaf maple thahat are useded r real spececialized pupurposes. there's a pretty high value, often in the music wood industrtry. larson: so i was digging around. i noticed they stripped the bark off here, and then you can see this marbled texture. huff: in general, we'll s see areas that poachers will come and check individual trees in an areea. they'll take the bark o , they'll look for the figurinin, the rippleled effect r right ununderneath the bark, , and thn theey'll find the right tree and take that tree. so this area i s faiairly represesentative o of f site that we see e normally in e forest. so having a a database for a any species with titimber is s goino help i investigatitions in thehe future because it enables us to take a piece of evidence that we suspect has bebeen stolen n andn trace i it back a actually to pc lands, to a stumpmp on the fore. goddard: we have to figure out what the victim is in terms of species. it may be legal to kill a cerertain spececies or pererfy illegal, depepending on its gens and i its species. we can a anae the dna o of a tree, then we can

extract dna from that plank, which is alall we need to examie the oils s to determine this ges and specieses. we are the first crcrime lab evever to haveve a xylariuum, where we use thehe kn sampleles to identntify wood eviidence. lancaster: so a xylarium is for wood wt a librarary is for books. it's where e we house all the different wood blocks that allow us to look at reference material when we get a new sample. and d so, if we get an uunknown and we ha a an idea off what it is, we can build a populationon based on what we he here. there are wood d collectis 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 blockcks or slivers in thisis r, and that really encompasses an incredible portion of commercial woods that are imported into the united states. woman: i'm an adventure scientist, which means i'm a

volunteer. we help collect data. at this moment, we're colollectg 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 e ecological person, so he gave me this awareness to take care of nature. so, to me, it was my niche. i l love 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 collllect high-valalue refereree samples for scientists like me. gisele: they train us volunteers to collect samples, and we're collectcting the core of the tr.

and the core, they're going to do a chchemical composition t to later on be able to match it, see if it''s posossible to m mat to the leaves. hopefully it will lead to help stop poaching. renee: going to insert this here to fit the core. and there we hahave 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 m there, we make fine

slivers out of the sections in order to maximize wwhat the sample can do. w we use direct analysis in real time, time-of- fligight mass spspec to look ate chemototypes of trees. and just lie e a fingerprinint can identy individual h humans, a c chemope cann identify individualal spec. if the e informatioion isalididd and stands in consesensus, it wl be integrated with our forest database. t the database allowss to provivide information to lalw enforcement, where they can determine if something has s ben done illegally, whether that's import wood shipmement or a wood pproduct under falalse declaratn or whohout completete certification. and so our goal is s really to o develop a a dae thatat can be usused hopefululle day by anynybody i in the worldn order to do this sort of identification to hp p them fight ilillegal logging. goddard: i love what i'm doing because we are a laboratory that suppports wildldlife law

enenforcement t at the lococal,, federal, and i internationonal levels. nothing like this has ever been done before. it is so satisfying to set somethingng le thiininto motioion. huff: it defininitely has a majr role, i thinink, in future investigatioions. 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 proroject and of volunteering for it will really resonate withth us the day thate heaar of a conviction of a loggr being done because they matched a sample that we collected. spalding: there's a lolot of demanand for thisis wood, and us it's sourced in a way that's renewawable and consciouslyy managed, you knknow, eventually the risk is, of course, an

imminent loss of that resource and dwindling of supply. otherwise, it's going to disisappear, anand that wououldy be a a true crimime. woman: scientists at the u.s. fish and wildlife laboratory in oregon hope forensics will one day help stop the importing of ilillegal lumumber. meanwnwhilen brazil's maranhao state, indigenous communities have formed cititizen patrols t to 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. is myo

introduce casey camp to the main stage today i started hearing about casey about two and a half years ago when cara romero and i were just in the beginning of our work with the rights of nature tribal governance. people in and around the movement kept saying to me you've got me casey can. she's and i what i heard from them was that she was leading the movement for the ponca nation her nation to be thehe first tribe in america to adopt the rights of nature. the polka were removed from their ancestral territory in what's now called nebraska. and forcibly taken to what's now

called oklahoma. when fracking started causing earthquakes and their reservation territory in oklahoma. they've had enough casey knew they needed stronger protection than current environmental law. to stop the destruction of land for everybody. sure enough- not shortly after i started hearing about casey the balkan nation did adopt a rights of nature tribal law in january two thousand eighteen and i was thrilled. and at the same time- are indigenous to program director cara merrill had just started in information sharing and knowledge creation campaign about rights of nature with her own tribe the gym wavy. and over the next few months care presented this idea of tribal righghts of nature to her community. this is the idea that tribes can write their own policy to protect nature in perpetuity. rates of nature forces those who dare to harm ecosystems not just to pay for damages done but to ensure that the ecosystem all lifeforms water air and-