The working group, dubbed TIMBER (Timber Interdiction Membership Board and Enforcement Resource), brings together several government departments — Justice, Agriculture, Interior and Homeland Security — and the US Council on Transnational Organised Crime’s Strategic Division. Its goal, according to US officials, is to combat deforestation and disrupt illegal wood smuggling through global supply chains, in part by strengthening co-operation between the US and foreign governments.
“The working group will focus on ferreting out and prosecuting violators, enhancing capacity of counterpart governments and removing obstacles to successful enforcement,” said Todd Kim of the DoJ’s Environmental and Natural Resources Division at the working group’s inaugural meeting.
