An electronic registration system for the transport and storage of all forestry products has been unveiled by Brazil’s environment minister Marina Silva.
She said the new system would reduce fraud because all forestry products travelling on Brazil’s roads must be registered in a central database with the Environment Ministry and the Environmental Protection Agency, known as IBAMA.
The system will replace the paper documents previously required to transport timber and other forestry products which environmentalists said were too easy to falsify.
Meanwhile, the clampdown on illegal logging continues, and it is believed to be slowing the rate of deforestation within the country.
One of the organisations targeted has been IBAMA, where corruption has been rife. Around 100 IBAMA employees have been arrested since mid-2003 in raids that have uncovered more than a dozen illegal logging rings.
Last week seven IBAMA employees were found to be involved in a group that was using front companies to harvest timber from protected areas in the western states.
