Estimating the extent of illegal trade of tropical forest products

The issues of illegal harvesting and trade of forest products have received substantial attention in international and domestic policy arenas in recent years. Recent developments include the publication of an action plan on illegal logging by the European Commission (EU 2003), the announcement of the President's Initiative Against Illegal Logging by the US State Department (USDOS 2003) (see McAlpine this issue) and a Japan-Indonesia Action Plan to curb illegal logging (Anon 2003). While the problem is a global one, with losses to timber theft in the USA alone having been estimated at over $1 billion annually (Mendoza 2003), the focus of global attention has been on the tropics where the World Bank estimates that illegal logging results in annual losses of $10-$15 billion per year (World Bank 2002).