Thanks to a video on the New Yorker website, I’ve learned about the London- and Washington D.C.-based Environmental Investigation Agency [1]. Not a governmental bureau in any sense, the EIA tackles environmental crime through a variety of means, often clandestine or with the efforts of a network of — one hesitates to say spies or moles — people who have day jobs inside government and industry. Currently the EIA has three campaigns, Species in Peril [2], Global Climate [3], and Forests for the World [4].
It’s in connection with this last campaign that Raffi Khatchadourian wrote “The Stolen Forests, The global war on illegal logging,” for the October 6 New Yorker. Although the article is not available online, you can watch a video [5] made by Khatchadourian, who travelled to Russia and China to take covert shots of illegal logging operations.
Those interested in the subject of illegal logging can read the excellent 30-page EIA report “No Questions Asked [6].” [PDF]