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Logging is described as the felling of the trees in the rainforest using artificial means (chainsaws, axes, bulldozers) for commercial purposes whether by large corporations or individuals. Logging is of two possible types:
1. Monocyclic silvicultural system: All trees in a given area is taken down
2. Polycyclic system: Only a few specified trees in a given area is cut, leaving a majority of the rest standing.

Low-intensity selective logging in a polycyclic system allows the forest to regrow.
However, the process used at present is a monocyclic silvicultural system with many stems felled per hectare. This results in:

1. Shifting species composition: Bare areas left in the forest results in competition which gives rise to more light-demanding, faster species of smaller plants, thus developing a secondary forest of pioneers, and exterminating the original inhabitants which were the big trees.

2. Compacted soil: The soil of the Amazonian rainforest is a a mixture of loam, sand and clay, making it very soluble in water. Because there is no more roots to hold down the soil, it allows the soil to wash off with rain water, resulting in erosion and leaving the land barren; another side-effect of this eroded soil is easy take-over of the forest floor by creeping plants and ferns.

3. Dammed streams: High intensity logging can result in some trees damming up streams and without the presence of culverts, the water distribution is changed, killing nearby forest, and paving the way for the development of swamps.

4. Vulnerability to fires: The loss of canopy cover caused by cutting down all the large trees leave the remaining forest much more vulnerable to forest fires.

5. Encourages other activities: Clearing the forest and building roads on it provides easy access for such activities as large-scale hunting and poaching, fuel-wood gathering, clearing of land for agriculture.

In the year 2000, Greenpeace set up an office deep in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon to track and monitor illegal logging, map logging areas, and take action in Brazil and in the international marketplace against the offending companies. They developed a technique to track illegal logging back to the exporting companies using ultraviolet paint. Over the duration of their research, they collected some valuable statistical facts and figures to emphasize the extent of the illegal logging taking place in Brazil.

According to scientists, Amazon logging companies extract or damage 10 to 40 percent of the live biomass of a forest area, and open up the canopy by14 to 50 percent.
Working in remote forest areas, the loggers often use false permits, ignore limitations of legal permits, cut species protected by law and steal from protected areas and indigenous lands. These are often small or medium scale operations that are able to avoid detection because of the remoteness of the logging locations, the weak presence of the federal environmental agency IBAMA, and a complex chain-of-custody in the cutting, hauling and transporting of the logs.
Legally approved forest operations in the Brazilian Amazon commonly provide cover for illegal logging. Logs are frequently cut illegally upriver from approved operations and clandestinely floated downstream. Once past an approved operation, they are “legalized” with forged documents claiming that the logs were cut on the property of the forestry operation.
An area of 589,000 km2, larger than France, has disappeared in the last 30 years. Satellite data has shown that deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon last year (19,532 km2) was greater than at any time since 1995.
According to Brazil's National Institute for Space Research, which monitors deforestation via satellite, the total annual deforested area equaled 19,836 square kilometers between August 1999 and August 2000. This is equivalent to four million soccer fields. This represents a 15 percent increase in deforestation compared to 17,259 from August 1998 to August 1999.
The logging industry in the Amazon is highly wasteful. Seventy percent of all logged timber ends up as unusable fragments or sawdust.
According to the Brazilian government, approximately 100 million hectares of land, or 20 percent of the entire Amazon region, is held illegally.
The Samauma tree is known in the Amazon as the "Queen of the Forest" because of its great height which can reach well over 50 meters. Some Indian groups consider the tree sacred. The softwood timber of the Samauma is pink-white and is used by locals to make rafts, while the roots are often used to make huts by forest dwellers. The Samauma tree is now being cut to make cheap plywood for export.
The Brazilian (Big Leaf) mahogany tree is one of the most well known hardwood species around the world. But it is also a symbol of the environmental and human degradation inflicted upon the Amazon rainforest and its indigenous populations by the logging industry. Since the 18th century, the tropical forests of South America have been plundered for Mahogany for ship building and later for furniture making. Today, furniture manufacture is the principle end use of Brazilian Mahogany, mainly in the US and the UK. These two countries export finished Mahogany all around the world.
In Brazil’s Amazonas State, all plywood and veneer exporting companies were either directly or indirectly involved in illegal logging between 1997 and 1999, including WTK that regularly exports plywood to the UK. In Pará state, the largest exporters are known to have purchased from illegal sources, including the Japanese logging company Eidai do Brazil which exports wood products to Japan, the Netherlands, US and UK.
Between January 2000 and April 2001, exports from the Brazilian port of Santarem to the Netherlands alone totaled 22,681 cubic meters of wood and wood products.
Within a period of only two and a half months this year, 22,392 cubic meters of wood and wood products were shipped from the Brazilian port of Belem to the US.
Pará state is the biggest log producer in the Amazon, producing approximately 12 million cubic meters in 1997, of which 19 percent was exported. The remaining was consumed by the Brazilian market. Sao Paulo state consumer 12 percent alone, followed by Minas Gerais (8 percent) and Rio Grande do Sul (6 percent).
Brazil exported 30,968 tones (31,600 tons) of mahogany in 2000. The US alone imported 22,442 tones (22,900 tons) or 72.4 percent of the total at US$28.2 million.

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