Following our action in France last month - when the crew of the Arctic Sunrise blocked a shipment of timber from the Brazilian Amazon - efforts have been stepped up in the country of origin to prevent illegal timber being exported in the first place.
The Brazilian government's environmental agency, Ibama, has seized a shipment of timber in the first check on exports by authorities in two years. The cargo vessel in question - the BSLE Express - would have been en route to Europe but has been detained in Santarem since March 27. So far, inspectors have confiscated 732m3 of wood which were travelling with false papers; papers that were economical with the truth when it came to the species of timber present in the shipment.
It's great to see the government in action like this in the Amazon and hopefully it won't be another two years before the under-resourced agency makes further inspections. As Marcelo Marquesini (one of our Amazon campaigners) points out, they need to investigate other areas of the supply chain as well:
"The Brazilian authorities need to go even further. They must track how this timber was logged, transported and processed before it reached the port to establish whether other illegal activities are connected to this particular cargo."
And of course, effective legislation in Europe to block these shipments of illegal timber will go a long way to helping efforts on the ground in the Amazon, and we're still working hard to make this happen.
