THE genetic profiles of individual trees will be identified for the first time in an initiative to crack down on illegal logging.
Conservationists joined the Howard Government in applauding a new screening program developed by Sydney company Simmonds Lumber to ensure that timber imports from Indonesia were legally sourced.
The move coincides with the release of a UN report that identifies Indonesia for the first time as having the world’s highest rate of forest clearing.
The Food and Agriculture Organisation’s latest State of the World’s Forests report says Indonesia is defying a pro-environment trend in east Asia by bulldozing 1.9million hectares of rainforest a year - about eight football fields a minute.
The World Bank has estimated that between 70 and 80 per cent of logging in Indonesia is illegal.
Simmonds Lumber will announce today the details of how it will use the DNA profiles of trees to screen $40million worth of timber imported annually by the company from Indonesia.
The company will in future accept only products from trees grown in legal forestry concessions.
Simmonds chief executive Paul Elsmore said that under the plan, which took five years to develop, a genetic profile would be taken of each tree in the concessions.
“Trees, like humans, have unique individual DNA codes,” Mr Elsmore said.
Each log arriving at Indonesian processing plants operating in partnership with the company will have its genetic profile checked to ensure it has been legally sourced.
“The tests are similar to those used when trying to establish the paternity of a child,” Mr Elsmore said. “This is the first verification in the world to use scientific evidence to prove the exact source of each tree.”
Singaporean company Certisource will audit the logs as they are processed in Indonesia to verify the source of products exported to Australia.
Federal Forestry Minister Eric Abetz said the program was a significant advance in efforts to stamp out illegal logging.
World Wide Fund for Nature forest co-ordinator Jana Blair said the DNA profiling was a promising tool in the global campaign to stop illegal forestry.
The FAO report said Indonesia had the largest number of critically endangered tree species - 122 - but the highest rate of forest destruction, with 2 per cent of its forests being cleared annually.
For more information on DNA LUMBER go to "http://www.certisource.net".