American consumers love Russian birch. Claimed to be durable, strong, and visually appealing, Russian birch is “the wood of choice for many carpenters, furniture makers, and manufacturers” in the United States. Hundreds of thousands of cubic meters of birch plywood are imported from Russia each year, some manufactured into products and the rest sold directly […]
How an EIA investigation regarding the Lacey Act led to the first criminal sentence and millions of dollars in fines for North America’s largest hardwood flooring retailer. In February 2016, for the first time in history, a major U.S. corporation was sentenced for committing a criminal felony for smuggling wood into the United States, related […]
A Russian supplier to Lumber Liquidators convicted of organized crime.
Click here to download the report in English. Click here to download the report in Japanese. In recent years, Japan has been the subject of increasing scrutiny regarding timber imports from tropical forested countries, the legality of which has at times been questioned by environmental groups. However, Japan’s imports of timber from the temperate forests […]
This video illustrates the path of illegal timber from the old growth forests in the Russian Far East, through manufacturing in China, and ultimately into homes and offices in the United States as hardwood flooring. The devastating impacts of the illegal timber trade clearly show the need for implementation and enforcement of the Lacey Act, […]
EIA’s new investigative video details the extent and nature of illegal logging in the Russian Far East (RFE) and tracks illegally harvested valuable hardwoods across the border into China, through factories and warehouses, to its ultimate destination in showrooms around the world. It is then purchased by consumers unaware of the devastating effects on the […]