DNA tests Trees Reduce Illegal Timber

Call it CSI: Singapore. But unlike the television show Crime Scene Investigators are popular, here detectives hired to look for evidence of the suspected wood by shop owners as part of the global illegal timber trade worth billions of dollars.

The detectives will take wood samples and examined in the laboratory, run DNA tests that would indicate the species and origin of a piece of wood. They will also keep track of timber and timber products from the forest to the store to ensure that the delivery of the goods does not violate the law.

"It's like CSI program coupled with saving the Earth," said Jonathan Geach, executive director of the Double Helix Tracking Technologies, a Singapore company that has been developing and commercializing DNA testing for wood, and is the only company in the world to do it.

Every two seconds, according to recent research from the World Bank, an area of ​​forest the size of a football field cleared by loggers. Each year, illegal logging is spent forested areas the size of Ireland.

Money earned from a trade estimated by Interpol to reach $ 30 billion per year is not taxable and are often run by organized groups to fund crime and conflict. Deforestation contributes to global warming due to increasing carbon emissions, and cause erosion due to loss of water catchment areas. This eliminates the livelihoods of forest peoples and disrupt the global timber prices.

Until now, the fight against illegal timber trade waged through regulation and preventive efforts, but was not so successful. Currently the focus is on the use of the criminal justice system and law enforcement techniques.

The new law punishable by imprisonment and fines pushed many companies around the world for more hard to find out where they got the wood, rather than having to pay for their negligence.

Gibson Guitar Corp., which produces some of the most expensive guitar in the world, agreed on Aug. 6 to pay a penalty of $ 300,000 after admitting that there is a possibility of buying ebony from Madagascar they are doing is illegal.

Labeling errors, lies the origin or the replacement of wood species for other species are common practices in the timber trade. Authorities said that progress in the industry and the declining price of DNA testing increasingly allows companies to comply with new regulations in the United States and Europe regarding earlier practices.

Retail business such as Kingfisher, Marks & Spencer and timber wholesaler Simmonds Lumber Australia has been using the technology or are planning to include these tests in their business practices.

"We see this as a step forward," said Jamie Lawrence, adviser wood and forest sustainability in Kingfisher, the largest home improvement retailer in Europe. Kingfisher has been using the services of an ad-hoc DoubleHelix to uncover fraud cases wood supplies, says Lawrence.

With genetic testing equipment has been reduced, the size of the workbench prototype is in testing phase. If successful, laboratories around the world can run a cheap DNA test timber within two years.

A laboratory run by Andrew Low, chief scientific DoubleHelix and one plant geneticist, is the vanguard of the global battle against illegal logging.

In the laboratory located at the University of Adelaide, South Australia, the method of DNA extraction from wood, the table or the floor being refined - a breakthrough to commercialize the test for timber importers, home improvement stores and law enforcement agencies. "Like humans, trees also have a unique DNA," said Lowe.

"DNA is present in every cell of wood and you can not faking it," he told Reuters news agency.

In early 2011, Lowe can extract DNA from the decades-old wood and get an accurate result. It leads to an increase in business and DoubleHelix now has 14 clients who use their services, with the majority of the testing done in Adelaide.

In 2004, Lowe and his colleagues extracted DNA from oak from the Mary Rose owned by King Henry VIII, which was sunk in 1945 and salvaged in 1982.

When DoubleHelix began peddling his services in 2008, the story of DNA is difficult to sell. But when the new law in the U.S. is starting to show its teeth in the last two years, and tougher regulations will be implemented in Europe from 2013, they increased the number of clients, said Kevin Hill, founder DoubleHelix.

In two years, the company plans to market the DNA extraction technique permits Lowe to global laboratory, because the timber industry worth $ 150 billion are under pressure to filter out illegal timber.

However, highly accurate DNA testing has limitations due to the absence of a genetic map of a comprehensive global tree. But the mapping is very expensive and time consuming. For teak trees alone can spend $ 1 million.
Currently available data bases for 20 new species of trees, especially wood of valuable tropical forests. Meanwhile, Kingfisher shops alone has 16,000 wood products, which is of course difficult to track one by one.

The weak link in the supply of wood in the midst of the forest and sawmill, where the stolen wood and forest derived from illegally harvested timber can be inserted between the legal. DNA testing can solve this, according DoubleHelix and their oldest customers, Simmonds Lumber.

Simmonds selling merbau imported from Indonesia, where half of the illegal timber logging, according to the World Bank study. By using DoubleHelix system, each shipment tracked merbau logs from the forest to the sawmill using DNA samples to ensure that no other wood included. DNA samples are then matched with data from the sawmill to the warehouse Simmonds in Australia.

But Simmonds alone can not provide the higher prices on wood products that have been tested for DNA because of the fierce competition in the timber trade. "DNA rather than marketing and increased stocks gain additional margin," said executive director John Simon.

Cost of DNA testing and verification services is $ 250 for each container, or 0.5 percent of the value of the timber. DoubleHelix said that the main goal is to make cheap DNA test so that each company will do it and solve the problem of illegal timber trade.

DNA testing has an impact in the lawsuit, said Shelley Gardner, logging program coordinator in the Department of Agriculture and the Forest Service in the United States. "Every time we deal with the court, they defend themselves by saying that DNA testing is an inhibitor. It's only small cases. When talking about the actual trade, I think this test will give a big impact, "he said.

Currently, no one knows for sure how many illegal timber products on the market, so the detective work silently. Working closely with international NGOs, they plan to test in stores Australia in the next few weeks, before heading to Europe and the United States, said Geach

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