When the modern Mafia puts someone on ice, they're not just talking about murder any more.

They might be referring to the black-market trade in refrigerator coolants.

That's right: Chlorofluorocarbons -- the chemical cooling agents that destroy the ozone layer -- are hot commodities on the black market. And organized crime is involved in importing and trading the chemicals, also known as CFCs, in Canada and the U.S.

"The big market takes organized people who can camouflage it among legal materials, people who can make sure it won't be inspected at the border," said Yvan Lafleur, head of enforcement for Environment Canada. "It's like drugs. It's like everything else criminal gangs are involved in."

Mr. Lafleur is the head of a new initiative at Environment Canada to gather intelligence about organized criminals, whose activities contribute -- literally -- to destroying the planet. He will draw his staff of 15 to 20 investigators from among the enforcement personnel already working for Environment Canada -- a group of some 135 officers that is already spread thinly across the country, handling everything from small-time poachers to pulp mills dumping effluent.

With last year's budget, which increased the Environment Department's budget to $731 million from $574 million after a decade of deep cuts, Mr. Lafleur said there was "some money" made available for the new intelligence initiative. But intelligence is expensive work, which involves meticulous fact-gathering and infiltration of criminal groups by agents or informants. Will the 15 to 20 officers be enough to break hardened criminal gangs?

"We have enough people to be capable to do initial analyses," Mr. Lafleur said, adding that he'd like more staff.

But, Mr. Lafleur says it's difficult to ask for money when even hospitals are underfunded. "Everyone in Canada will tell you they don't have enough people to do the work. The question is, do we have enough people to set priorities?"

Though trading in illegal CFCs might sound like something from a B-grade gangster movie, it's a serious problem that threatens to undo the environmental progress made by law-abiding companies in replacing CFCs with chemicals that don't harm the ozone layer.

The illegal trade in CFCs began after the Montreal Protocol was signed in 1987, in which 149 countries promised to ban CFCs and similar chemicals. Widely used in cooling systems for everything from refrigeration trucks to air conditioning, CFCs destroy the ozone layer and expose all life on Earth to the sun's cancer-causing UVB radiation.

It was a drastic and necessary environmental measure -- but the ban was not complete. Companies in North America were still allowed to use recycled CFCs in existing equipment; and some Third World countries like India and China were still allowed to manufacture CFCs for domestic needs until 2010.

With both a supply and a demand in place, a black market soon arose. Criminal rings, claiming to sell recycled CFCs, in fact import new ones into North America. Dodgy repair shops, turning a blind eye to their suppliers, buy the CFCs to refill cooling systems that are expensive to replace.

In the mid-90s, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimated that the black-market trade in CFCs could be as big as the drug trade -- and almost as lucrative.

How big is organized environmental crime in Canada? Mr. Lafleur admits that he doesn't know yet.

"We've just barely touched the beginning of understanding what is happening with these groups," he said. "Every time we start pulling on a thread, a lot more unravels than we expected."

Hazardous chemicals are only one illegal commodity in the grasp of organized crime. There is also evidence that links criminal groups to smuggling of endangered species, especially in areas such as Chinese traditional medicine. Typically, Mr. Lafleur said, a drug smuggler might enter Canada with a load of cocaine and leave with a shipment of gall-bladders from illegally killed black bears. As animals disappear from other parts of the world through poaching and habitat encroachment, the pressure on Canadian wildlife is growing. Capitalizing on the demand for animal products, Asian criminal gangs are showing up in the far North, where they never had a presence before, Mr. Lafleur said. The growing volume of international trade makes it easier for illicit shipments to escape detection, and enforcement officers often don't even know what to look for, since animal parts that have no value to North Americans -- like bear paws -- can fetch a high price in Asia.

Systematic intelligence work has long been used by organizations like the RCMP, but is almost entirely new for the people who look after Canada's nature and wildlife.

"Environment was always seen as something nice, people go on a vacation, they go to a park," Mr. Lafleur sighed. "Now we realize it's not just that."

Nature -- since the Mafia got involved, it ain't just a walk in the park anymore.