USA: Explaining how the Lacey Act is expected to stop illegal logging

Earth’s tree cover helps store carbon dioxide and moderate ground
temperatures. But society’s voracious appetite for wood products and
cleared land has fostered rampant deforestation around the globe. Many
trees are rapidly disappearing even from forests that are ostensibly
protected by law. A new U.S. regulation that went into effect earlier
this week has the potential to dramatically dampen trade in those
poached trees. The Lacey Act prohibits trade in protected species.
When President William McKinley signed it into law 108 years ago, this
anti-poaching statute — the nation’s oldest wildlife-protection
regulation — covered only game and wild birds. Over the years, it has
been extended to prohibit interstate or international importation of
protected or illegally gained species.

On Dec. 15, a new amendment
went into effect that further extends the law’s reach; it now
prohibits U.S. trade that aids and abets illegal logging.
Specifically, the new amendment makes it “unlawful to import, export,
transport, sell, receive, acquire, or purchase in interstate or
foreign commerce any plant, with some limited exceptions, taken,
possessed, transported or sold in violation of the laws of the United
States, a State, an Indian tribe, or any foreign law that protects
plants.” Admittedly, that’s quite a mouthful. But one primary intent
of the law was to shut down illegal logging — especially overseas — by
drying up the U.S. market for any resulting wood products (from lumber
and furniture to paper). At a briefing this morning, World Resources
Institute president Jonathan Lash noted that because no one can look
at a piece of wood, much less wood chips or paper, and determine
whether its parent tree had been harvested legally, the law puts the
onus on mills and those who use wood products to ensure that none of
their feedstock had been acquired illegally. For instance, if a
facility milled 1,000 trees, of which even a few had been harvested
illegally, then all products from that mill would be prohibited access
to U.S. markets. If shipments from such mills could be traced to a
U.S. port or air strip, federal enforcement officials would have the
right to seize the cargo and impose stiff fines on the exporters.
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/39402/title/Thwarting_Tree_Poachers

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