What’s in a name for timber? Trade documentation and conservation prioritization in four tropical timber species imported to the United States

Abstract

The tropical timber trade faces significant sustainability challenges, including deforestation, illegal logging, and inadequate traceability. Inaccurate species identification further complicates these issues, leading to unreliable trade statistics and enforcement challenges. The Lacey Act Amendment (LAA) of 2008 mandated declaring scientific names for timber shipments entering the United States. Therefore, this study assessed the implementation of the LAA using data obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request to the United States Department of Agriculture-Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service for 4 tropical timber species including Keruing, Meranti, Acajou d’Afrique, and Mahogany from Indonesia, Malaysia, Brazil, Philippines, Cameroon, Ghana, Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, and Bolivia, with high rates of illegal logging. This study showed that the United States imported 49 species of Keruing species group, 126 species of Meranti species group, 6 species of Acajou d’Afrique species group, and 2 species of Mahogany species group during 2017–2023. Despite mandatory declarations, approximately 14.60% of timber import records lacked species-specific names. Conservation assessments identified 37 species of Keruing species group and 68 species of Meranti species group listed as threatened by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) but absent from the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). Moreover, the principal component analysis (PCA) indicated that the first principal component was primarily driven by import value and import volume, reflecting the overall trade prominence, while the second principal component captured temporal pattern through import year. Further, this study developed a Trade-Adjusted Conservation Priority Index (TACPI) that integrated conservation status with trade prominence to prioritize species at risk. Species with high TACPI scores, such as Dipterocarpus coriaceus and Shorea balangeran, were identified as urgently needing regulatory focus. To strengthen sustainable trade and conservation, it is recommended to enforce the LAA more strictly, expand timber identification technologies, and mandate key supplier countries, who are the CITES’ signatories, to list high-risk species in the CITES appendices.