The British Broadcasting Service (BBC) recently aired a television programme exposing illegal logging in Congo Brazzaville. The BBC investigated illegal logging in the rainforest and the timber trail from Africa to West Europe. "It''s a lucrative trade from the stump to the checkout - BBC says - that''s leading to the destruction of new swathes of vital rainforest and begins with the loggers who risk their lives cutting down hundred-year-old trees for just £2.50 a day.
BBC reporter Raphael Rowe spent six months tracking logs from Congo''s jungle, and discovers that new European timber regulations (EUTR) are failing to stop illegally-felled wood getting into European stores and on to the consumer.