Recent seizures of illegally sourced wood in Panama have highlighted the important role the country plays the international timber trade, due to both its strategic geographical position and valuable species of trees on its territory.
On March 28 and 31, Panamanian police seized two containers at ports in the northern city of Colón, carrying a species of local wood, known as cocobolo, on their way to China. Jointly, the two containers held around 850 pieces of cocobolo wood, also named Dalbergia retusa.
Cocobolo trees, related to the rosewood, are prized internationally for use in making expensive carpentry, as well as custom knife handles and gunstocks. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, this wood sold for between $3,000 and $4,000 a ton, according to Panamanian newspaper, Critica.
Panamanian authorities have seen an alarming number of seizures of cocobolo for years, mostly bound for China. Back in 2014, InSight Crime reported on millions of dollars worth of the wood being caught along the Panama Canal. This accompanied a rise in legal exports, which increased by 52 percent from 2015 to 2018, although this then dropped through 2019 and 2020.
Most timber trafficking in Panama takes place in its southern province of Darién, along its border with Colombia. The country’s Environment Ministry recently estimated that 20 percent of Darién’s forest cover has been removed in the last seven years.