“Can people buy Kosso wood from you?”, was the message to a Nigerian log trafficker that kicked off an investigation into dozens of Facebook accounts responsible for smuggling precious, often protected wood species from Africa into Vietnam.
The answer to our inquiry about Kosso, a CITES-listed rosewood illegally harvested in Africa where loggers wreak havoc with local biodiversity and from where it's mostly illegally exported - was hardly surprising: “I have lots of Kosso wood for sale in Nigeria,” the Nigerian Facebook account replied. Records show the account owner is very active on Vietnamese Facebook groups.
It's just one example of a larger analysis that reveals how Facebook facilitates trading accounts and groups that shift large quantities of precious wood across continents.
The past year of global pandemic has seen an increase in the number of Facebook ads for logs from African nations at high risk.
Once imported into Vietnam, they often...