What little excuses there ever were for buying, or for that matter selling, wooden objects from illegally felled trees are disappearing as fast as the forests from which they come.

One Oxfordshire company has come up with software that enables buyers, foresters, governments, or anyone else interested, to trace hardwood back to the tree it once was .

And another Oxfordshire entrepreneur cum writer has become the lead author in a WWF manual aimed at helping buyers identify timber being sold illegally.

Harwell company Helveta has come up with Control Intelligence System (CIS) TracElite, high-tech software combining barcoding, radio frequency ID, global positioning systems and mapping techniques which can pin down exactly where any wood has come from.

Hand-held devices activating the system have even been supplied to indigenous people in Africa and South America, to help them police their homelands and protect them from illegal loggers.

Managing director Patrick Newton said: "In 2008 an EU directive called Forest Law Enforcement Governance and Trade will come into force. It will require anyone dealing in timber to provide evidence of a back to stump' chain of supply.

"And that evidence must be technology-based, because you can drive a bus through paper-based evidence. Our system is less corruptible."

Mr Newton, 40, started Helveta in March 2004 with £1m start-up money from business angels Oxford Capital Partners. Now he has secured another £2m from Close Ventures. The company already employs 12 people and aims to increase its workforce to 35 by the end of 2007.

Before going into the timber-tracking business, Mr Newton ran a Nasdaq-quoted oil and gas supply-chain software business in the USA.

He said: "I cashed out of that and a friend of mine in the Tropical Forest Trust persuaded me that supply-chain software was needed in forestry too.

"I thought it was an opportunity to work in the technology sector and to do something good for the planet at the same time."

He added: "There are some surprising similarities between the oil and gas industries and the timber trade. After all, 20 years ago people thought there was an endless supply. Now those in both trades are waking up to the fact that it is not the case."

The new tracking process starts with a tree in a remote forest being carefully located on a map with its position, species, size, and whether it is earmarked for production (ie felling) or for regeneration, carefully noted.

The next stage might follow in a year or two, when a tree is felled and dragged to a sawmill. It is immediately barcoded and that barcode will accompany every part of the tree to its end product in your local retailer.

The system is policed by careful monitoring of total volumes. If too much wood suddenly appears from an area, the system will pick it up immediately, enabling investigators to get busy.

Mr Newton said: "Soon we will be able to say exactly which tree, whether from the pristine forests of Bolivia, or from Africa or Borneo, any piece of wood comes from. Already, we can tell you which batch of wood it comes from."

Helveta last month jointly won the Environmental Achievement Award at the Timber Journal Awards, together with its partner, Tropical Forest Trust.

The two won the award for the use of the company's mapping technology in a project called CISEarth, a collaboration in central Africa with Forest People's Programme, the Department of Anthropology at the London School of Economics, and the Congolese Industrielle des Bois.

The aim of the collaboration is to map the surroundings and resources of indigenous people in Congo-Brazzaville and Cameroon. Non-literate pygmies use the devices with Global Positioning Systems (GPS) to capture the data themselves.

And, as if such revolutionary equipment was not a large enough stride forward in the battle against illegal logging, another Oxfordshire expert, Frank Miller, has emerged as lead author of the new WWF manual aimed at helping timber buyers shun illegal purchases.

Mr Miller said: "More than 8.8 million acres of forest, bigger than the size of Belgium, are being destroyed each year, with one of the major causes being illegal logging. It is distorting trade, destroying nature, damaging communities and has a huge impact on the global economy.

"Hopefully, a manual like Keep it Legal can go some way in making it harder for illegal wood to be passed off as legal."

Mr Miller has run Track Record since 2004, employing four people at Cornbury Park. The company investigates the integrity of entire supply chains for clients, including large blue-chip firms.

He said: "Forests can be adequately policed only if large companies run large areas almost like states within states."

On a more depressing note he added: "The trouble is that even if the EU were to refuse to allow any uncertified wood to be sold in Europe, illegal loggers would simply sell it in the USA, or China."

Contacts: Helveta: www.helveta.com Track Record: www.www.trackrecordglobal.com Keep it Legal: www.panda.org/gftn