Trackable Bar Codes Speak for the Trees

A British firm has devised a tech-savvy method for cutting into the black market timber trade, using bar codes on trees. The company, Helveta, made its name in the world of supply chain management.

Helveta is currently tracking about 1 million trees — those over a certain size and thus attractive to poachers — in tropical regions of the world. When a tree is legally harvested, foresters scan the bar code into a handheld device, which transmits the data to Helveta's database, and then the felled tree receives a new bar code for export auditing (according to an article by Fast Company).

The Fast Company story puts Helveta's tree-tracking technology into the context of global climate change talks — scheduled to take place in Copenhagen, Denmark, this December — which may produce better incentives for countries to preserve forests, which soak up mass quantities of carbon dioxide.

Bar-coding technology could also ease the $10 billion annual tax losses timber-producing countries suffer from tree poaching. Indeed, the problem is so widespread that even major companies like IKEA, BMW, and Kraft rely on leather and beef from farms involved in deforestation.

Helveta's timber-tracking technology sounds just like similar systems used to track other goods that are shipped around the world. Users can customize the software according to their rules, according to the company's website, sending alerts for "logs failing to move along the supply chain within a prescribed time frame" or "logging outside a defined cutting block."

This video from BBC Oxford News illustrates how the system works:

Now the Lorax, that tireless champion of the trees brought to life by the late Dr. Seuss, can finally get some rest.