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 entering the country, while in 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 foundation; and the farvue foundation. [playg 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 exactly alike. it's like a thumb print. it's unique. it's a signature. it's going to be its own unique being, and they're beautiful. this project i have here is a classic example of the book-mched, what we call "flame maple top." it's a gibson les paul, and it just speaks volumes just right there. boom. the natural, slightly ambered, 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 effort--if i have to go out and obtain wood, i'm certnly going to want to obtain wood that is definitely known to be, you know, sourced 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 reputable sources. woman: when people think of illegal logging, some of their first thoughts would be thinking about boards, something kind of like this. this is dalbergia nigra. but in realityillegal logging is also about things like this. this is a guitar back made out of dalrsia nigra-- 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 that's an

issue that really needs to be tackled. i am a wood identification technology specialist and analytical chemist for the u.s. forest service. i also help build the forensic spectra of trees database that we house here at the lab. goddard: our laboratory is the only full-service crime labor 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. like any other police crime lab, we examine evidence and, in a triangular fashion, we attempt to link suspect, victim, and crime scene with that evidence. lancaster: if you look at data ovided by wwf, global witness, and eia, you find that not only are we going into a record-breaking yr of land defenders murdered to protect their forest and environment, the u.s. economy is depressed by about $1 million due to illegal

logging imports, and illegal logging is the third-largest trans-national crime. goddard: a tree, in fact, is more complex than we know. it has more chromosomes than we have. it can easily be a victim because it may be illegal to take that species, depending on what genus and species it is or where it's located. lancaster: trees can be poached just as any sort of traditional wildlife can be poached. if you can't identify it, you can't protect it, and so our goal is really to develop a database that can be used, hopefully one day, by anybody in the world in order to do this sort of identification to help them fight illegal logging. huff: a lot of cases we've had, it's very difficult to prove that wood was obtained illegally once it gets processed in a mill or once it's removed from

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 know that it came from a duff site and tracking the wood from the forest to a mill to be processed and placed into commerce. man: yeah, without a suspect or anything, i didn't think there was much 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 see e sawdust everywhere. i was looking for people stealing firewood because we had some trees in this area that were cut for firewood. so 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 my first real encounter with maple theft. huff: there's a lot of value,

especially in trees like the big leaf maple that are used for real specialized purposes. there's a pretty high value, often in the music wood industry. 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 see areas that poachers will come and check individual trees in an area. they'll take the bark off, they'll look for the figuring, the rippled effe right underneath the bark, and then they'll find the right tree and take that tree. so this area is fairly representative of a duff site that we see normally in the forest. so having a database for any species with timber is gog to help investigations in the futureecause it enables us to take a piece of evidence at we suspect has been stolen d then trace it back actually public lands, to a stump on the forest. goddard: we have to figure out what the victim is in terms of species. it may be legal to kill a certain species or perfectly illegal, depending on its genus and its species. we can analyze the dna of a tree, then we can

extract dna from that plank, which is all we need to examine the oils to determine this genus and species. we are the first crime lab ever to have a xylarium, where we use the known samples to identify wood evidence. lancaster: so a xylarium is for wood what a library is for books. it's where we house all the different wood blocks that allow us to look at reference material when we get a new sample. and so, if we get an unknown and we have an idea of what it is, we can build a population based on what we have here. there are wood collections 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 or slivers in this room, 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 collecting 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 ecological person, so he gave me this awareness to take care of nature. so, to me, it was my niche. i 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 collect high-value reference samples for scientists like me. gisele: they train us volunteers to collect samples, and we're collecting the core of the tree.

and the core, they're going to do a chemical composition to later on be able to match it, see if it's possible to match it to the leaves. hopefully it will lead to help stop poaching. renee: going to insert this here to fit the core. and there we have 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 there, we make fine slivers out of the sections in order to maximize what the sample can do. we use direct analysis in real time, time-of- flight mass spec to look at the chemotypes of trees.nd just like a fingerprint can identify individual humans, a chemotype can identify individual species. if the information is validated and stands in consensus, it will be integrated with our forest database. the database allows us to provide information to law enforcement, where they can determine if something has been done illegally, whether that's import wood shipment or a wood product under false declaration or without complete certification. and so our goal is really to develop a database that c be used hopefully one day by anybody in the world in order to do this sort of identification to help them fight ilgal logging. goddard: i love what i'm doing because we are a laboratory that

supports wildlife law enforcement at the local, state, federal, and international levels. nothing like this has ever been done before. it is so satisfying to set something like this into motion. huff: it definitely has a major role, i think, in future investigations. 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 project and of volunteering for it will really resonate with us the day that we hear of a conviction of a logger being done because they matched a sample that we collected. spalding: there's a lot of demand for this wood, and unless it's sourced in a way that's renewable and consciously managed, you know, eventually the risk is, of course, an

imminent loss of that resource and dwindling of supply. otherwise, it's going to disappear, and that would really be a true crime. woman: scientists at the u.s. fish and wildlife laboratory in oregon hope forensics will one day help stop the importing of illegal lumber. meanwhile, in brazil's maranhao state, indigenous communities have formed citizen patrols 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. ñgaaaaaaa

woman: the islands that are connected to the gabrielino tongva are the southern channel islands. the most significant one is pimu santa catalina island. woman 2: sometimes, on a clear day like this, where you can see catalina, i can imagine my ancestors paddling back and forth from here. it really doesn't look that far. the ti'at was not just a vessel to go out into the water. it kept us in contact with tribes north and south of us, along the coast, and for the groups that also lived on the channel islands. woman everything is a relationship when you're building those boats. it's all a relationship that you establish with that boat. and then to put her in the water,