Mekong forests are also home to a range of endangered animals, including the clouded leopard, tiger, and Malayan sun bear.
(See related photo: "New Leopard Species Announced" [March 15, 2007].)
Many of the remaining forests in the region have been so heavily logged that they are now of critically low quality. In Laos, for example, only around 10 percent of forests remain commercially viable, according to the report.
Undercover Investigations
In Vietnam logging is restricted to 5.3 million cubic feet (150,000 cubic meters) from forests grown for timber production.
To satisfy its demand for raw products, Vietnam is exploiting the forests of neighboring Laos despite Laotian laws, which ban the export of logs and cut timber, the EIA report claims.
(Related news: "Vietnam Becoming Asia's Illegal Animal 'Supermarket,' Experts Warn" [September 13, 2006].)
In the Vietnamese port of Vinh, undercover investigators found piles of huge logs from Laos awaiting sale.
At one border crossing 45 trucks carrying logs were seen lining up on the Laos side waiting to cross into Vietnam.
The agencies estimate that at least 17.7 million cubic feet (500,000 cubic meters) of logs move illegally from Laos to Vietnam every year.
"This trade is organized by informal networks involving timber brokers and government and military officials on both sides of the border," Newman said.
"The losers are the rural communities [in Laos] who traditionally rely on forests for their livelihood."
According to the Laotian government, forest cover in the country has declined from 70 percent in the 1970s to 40 percent today.
Large volumes of timber from Laos also go to China's burgeoning wood-processing industry, researchers say.
Jeff Hayward is the verification manager of the SmartWood Program for the Rainforest Alliance in Washington, D.C.
"The EIA study illustrates the ways and means for illicit timber to end up in the workshops of Vietnam, resulting in consumers [in Europe and the United States] unwittingly buying furniture that comes at the cost of forests in Laos and Cambodia," he said.
New Legislation
Vietnam's furniture exports reached U.S. $2.4 billion in 2007, a ten-fold increase since 2000.
The United States is by far the largest market for Vietnamese wooden furniture, accounting for almost 40 percent of the exports.
"Illegal logging and trade are rife, but most businesses don't ask hard questions about the source of the wood they buy, because they simply don't have to do so," said Andrea Johnson, the forest campaigns coordinator for EIA in Washington, D.C.
"Until consumer markets like the U.S. change their no-questions-asked policy, irreplaceable forests from Indonesia to Vietnam to Honduras to the Congo are going to continue to end up as dining room tables and porch swings."
The U.S. legislation being considered prohibits the import or trade of illegally sourced timber and wood products.
The bill has broad political support and is backed by virtually all major environmental organizations and the U.S. timber industry.
Illegal logging costs U.S. companies as much as a billion U.S. dollars a year in lost exports and reduces prices for timber products, according to the American Forest and Paper Association.
"This law will send a major signal to the global timber sector that the world's largest consumer market is closing its doors to illegal wood," Johnson said.
"Companies who source on the up-and-up and conduct strong due diligence will now be rewarded with market share rather than undercut by cheaper illegal products."
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