Synthesizing over 10 years of on-the-ground field observations into an eye-opening report, WWF's Illegal Logging in the Russian Far East: Global Demand and Taiga Destruction highlights a sobering reality: Russia’s forest sector has become deeply criminalized, with poor law enforcement, allowing illegal loggers to plunder valuable timber stocks of oak, ash, elm, and linden with impunity.

Forests in the Amur-Heilong watershed, particularly those in the Russian Far East, are under tremendous pressure to supply timber to meet growing global demand for wood products. Increasing demand for this timber over the last two decades has fueled illegal and unsustainable logging in some of the Amur’s most valuable and threatened forests.