Timber theft is a crime that takes generations to overcome – generations the victim will not see.
Timber is surprisingly easy to steal, and the high value of northeastern hardwoods is all the motivation needed by the thieves, who are small in number but large in their collective impact. Theft is easy because timber grows in rural areas and is often owned by absentees. Logs can be transformed into lumber in a matter of hours or days.
Thanks to new legislation in New York, we are light years ahead of our policies of just 10 years ago. Officers from the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) can now investigate timber theft as well as wildlife violations on private lands. Now it’s illegal to cut any trees on another person’s land without permission, not just evergreens. Penalties for theft have increased, and training of law enforcement and judicial personnel in timber theft issues in New York begins this year.
These important steps have increased public awareness of timber theft, but that hasn’t been enough to reduce the practice. That will come only with a real change in the culture. A culture has many faces, and this particular one involves landowners, the subset of loggers who are dishonest, sawmills, and law enforcement personnel.
There are many landowners who naïvely think that only others will be victims of timber theft, so they can be blissfully unaware of the devastating impacts – emotional, environmental, and financial – until it happens to them.
Dishonest loggers find ways to justify their actions by suggesting that everyone steals, so it’s okay for them. This is clearly not the case – few harvesters are career thieves, calculating and deliberate. Timber thieves know that potential rewards are high and the risk of getting caught and convicted very low.
Sawmills play a role in the system by continuing to buy wood from loggers they know are stealing it. The identities of most timber thieves are well known, but sawmills will buy stolen logs so their competitors can’t.
Many of those entrusted with enforcing the law – from the investigating DEC officer to the District Attorney – are not aggressively pursuing arrests and convictions, for a number of reasons. There are always competing demands on their time, and for many, lack of familiarization is a key factor.
Anyone in law enforcement understands a stolen car or a convenience store holdup. But trees? Timber theft is beyond the usual and hence often viewed as a civil matter, a mere boundary dispute, even when the value of the cut trees reaches tens of thousands of dollars. Normally, crimes are investigated by public agencies, but if the theft is not pursued by the District Attorney, it’s left up to the landowner to prove that a crime was committed.
If a landowner cannot afford to document the charge, the dishonest party has won again. Even if a case reaches civil court, and the jury finds in favor of the landowner, career thieves are often “judgment proof” – their personal assets are in another’s name and their equipment is owned by creditors. Thus, even the opportunity for victims to receive recompense can be lost.
I think it is time for further policy steps to set the stage for changing the culture that allows timber theft to thrive. In particular, landowners must accept more responsibility for protecting their property, and law enforcement officers need training, laws they can work with, and ways to distinguish crime from appropriate activity. In the process, harvesters, buyers, and other landowners would be protected as well.
We need to recognize that many people in law enforcement work daily with the penal law and are less familiar with the environmental conservation law. Timber theft is a major crime and merits enactment of its own section in the penal law. Inclusion of strict liability, three-strikes-you’re-out, and other penal law provisions should be considered, along with needed cross-references between conservation law and penal law. This will help familiarize law enforcement personnel with timber theft and alleviate underlying uncertainty. Law enforcement personnel need not be foresters, but they must be comfortable with their role.
We should formalize landowner responsibility with a state-required “Owner’s Consent” for all timber harvests. With this document, the owner designates the sale area and is liable if the area is incorrect, and the harvester acknowledges the sale boundary and is liable for actions outside the designated area, including trespass to a neighboring property.
The owner’s consent would be filed to a central location, not for approval, but so it could be verified by a harvester, trucker, or buyer, so each could account for the logs being handled. Verification of the Owner’s Consent online or by phone would protect the harvester, trucker, and buyer, would foster effective law enforcement, and would provide neighbors and absentee owners with peace of mind.
As a landowner, I admit this plan would be a nuisance, and who wants more government? But I want effective law enforcement, and so do my neighbors. It only seems right that I assume responsibility for my land and what happens on it, because I want my neighbors to assume responsibility for their land and, in the process, mine.
Ronald W. Pedersen is past president of the New York Forest Owners Association and has been active in timber theft prevention efforts for a number of years. His family’s 200-acre property in Deposit, New York, was named New York’s Outstanding Tree Farm in 1998.