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New microchip aims to stamp out illegal logging in Brazil
11/10/2010
A pioneering microchip system has the potential to help protect the Amazon from illegal logging.
A microchip attached to the base of each tree will hold data about its location, size and who cut it down, allowing land owners using sustainable forestry practices to distinguish their wood from that acquired through illegal logging.
With a hand-held device, the tree's vital statistics can be gleaned from the chip, telling the tree's story from the point it was felled to the sawmill that processed and sold the wood.
Borges, of the organization Acao Verde (Green Action), which is managing the small pilot project on a large farm says, “People talk a lot these days about wood coming from sustainable forestry practices - this is a system that can prove it.”
Brazil receives much pressure to reduce the deforestation which is destroying large sections of the Amazon every year and this project is part of the lumber certification trend, which gives buyers a guarantee that the wood was produced without damaging the forest. Selectively cutting trees can actually generate timber revenues without damaging forests.
Gary Dodge, director of science and certification at the nonprofit Forest Stewardship Council, which has led a global push for lumber certification, lauded the microchip project and said it would help to isolate fraud originating where the trees are cut.
“If there is fraud taking place between the forest owner and the mill, then a microchip would be great help in combating illegal logging,” he said.
A microchip attached to the base of each tree will hold data about its location, size and who cut it down, allowing land owners using sustainable forestry practices to distinguish their wood from that acquired through illegal logging.
With a hand-held device, the tree's vital statistics can be gleaned from the chip, telling the tree's story from the point it was felled to the sawmill that processed and sold the wood.
Borges, of the organization Acao Verde (Green Action), which is managing the small pilot project on a large farm says, “People talk a lot these days about wood coming from sustainable forestry practices - this is a system that can prove it.”
Brazil receives much pressure to reduce the deforestation which is destroying large sections of the Amazon every year and this project is part of the lumber certification trend, which gives buyers a guarantee that the wood was produced without damaging the forest. Selectively cutting trees can actually generate timber revenues without damaging forests.
Gary Dodge, director of science and certification at the nonprofit Forest Stewardship Council, which has led a global push for lumber certification, lauded the microchip project and said it would help to isolate fraud originating where the trees are cut.
“If there is fraud taking place between the forest owner and the mill, then a microchip would be great help in combating illegal logging,” he said.
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