Lumber raid aids rainforest

In a battle to save the rainforest, Brazilian law-enforcement officials last week confiscated hundreds of thousands of cubic feet of illegally logged lumber from a handful of sawmills operating out of a town in the eastern Amazon.

Authorities say the crackdown is in response to last year’s increase in deforestation, reported Reuters. Next week officials expect to confiscate even more than the 353,000 cubic feet they seized during their recent raids in Tailandia, but environmentalists say illegal logging there is far from being squashed.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva reportedly has taken a strong stance against the illegal activity that resulted in the clearing of as much as 2,700 square miles in the span of five months last year.