California's ancient redwood forests have survived fires, logging and disease.
Now they face a growing threat from poachers who steal downed old-growth redwood trees in ever-larger numbers, scarring the land and robbing the forest of a vital part of its ecology for the sake of a few thousand dollars.
In the past eight months, five men have been convicted of stealing old-growth logs -- those 750 years old or more -- from Redwood National and State Parks, established in 1968 to protect nearly half of the world's remaining old-growth redwoods. The convictions follow a concerted effort by park officials to crack down on thefts and preserve one of California's greatest natural treasures.
Poaching is a problem in every national park. There is seemingly nothing poachers won't take, be it snakes from Mojave National Preserve, fossils from Badlands National Park in South Dakota, American ginseng from Shenandoah National Park in Virginia or frontier-era pistols from Fort Davis National Historic Site in Texas.
"There are no resources out there, besides air, that someone isn't taking," said Todd Swain, a National Park Service special agent who has investigated such crimes since 1991. "There's a huge segment of the population who are commercially removing park resources, and it does a huge amount of damage."
Redwood theft has been a mounting problem at Redwood National and State Parks for about 10 years, and park officials believe its rise followed the decline of the timber industry.
Downed redwood logs take as long as 500 years to decompose. In that time, they retain water and nutrients, providing habitat for hundreds of species of plants, invertebrates and animals. New trees take root in the downed redwoods, which also fertilize the next generation of redwoods.
"To me, it's a philosophical issue," said Pat Grediagin, chief ranger at Redwood park. "These trees, this forest, were set aside for the enjoyment of all people. Less than 5 percent of all the old-growth redwoods in the world remain, and to have people steal them is a major problem."
Thieves take downed logs from readily accessible sites -- usually near roads or trails within the park, which covers 133,000 acres along the far north coast of California. Although thieves haven't started chopping down live trees, authorities worry that will become an issue as the number of easily poached logs diminishes.
The logs, which can reach 4 or 5 feet in diameter, are cut into smaller pieces called bolt shakes that measure about 3 feet long and fetch about $10 apiece from lumber mills. The wood is often turned into shingles or sold to artists, and the thieves select only high-quality wood with straight grain and few knots.
"They're professionals," said Laura Denny, a Redwood park ranger who investigates redwood thefts. "They know what they're looking for, and they know what they're doing."
Denny said the thieves usually work at night, when few people are around to hear their chain saws, and the forest's heavy growth does a remarkable job muffling the sound. The thieves usually work over the course of several nights, coming and going at random times to evade detection.
Statistics are spotty, but federal officials said such thefts are a problem within each of the country's 385 national parks and on land managed by the U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management and other agencies.
Even something so seemingly worthless as the wads of fur and bones that owls regurgitate are taken by the boxful from public land.
Swain, the park service investigator, has compiled data showing an average of 853 archaeological thefts on federal land each year between 1996 and 2003. And the National Park Service's 2006 budget states, "The poaching of wildlife from national parks has been steadily increasing each year for the past several years."
Redwood park rangers often learn of thefts only when they happen upon haphazardly cut logs, or piles of bolt stakes. At that point, rangers will set up a stakeout, sometimes waiting several nights for the poachers to return.
Occasionally, rangers catch the thieves in the act. Such was the case of Christopher David Guffie, a 42-year-old Orick man convicted last month of petty theft and vandalism after rangers found him and Ronald Earl Vaughn cutting an old-growth log near Lost Man Creek in July 2005.
Vaughn, who is 37 and lives in Orick, pleaded guilty to the same charges in March. Neither man could be reached for comment. Denny said Guffie was caught poaching logs in 1996, and they believe he has regularly taken logs from the park.
Park officials said they can't quantify how much wood has been stolen, but they said investigators found receipts showing Guffie earned $15,000 selling redwood they believe was stolen from the park. The wood is so valuable that someone looted several hundred pounds of it from the locked building where authorities had stashed about 1 ton of wood after Guffie's arrest.
The case highlights the lucrative nature of poaching. Wild ginseng, for example, sells for as much as $400 a pound. Dinosaur fossils can sell for thousands of dollars, and even an American Indian arrowhead can bring a few hundred.
But such thefts carry a far greater cost that often can't be quantified, officials said.
Aside from the damage caused by dragging logs through the woods -- rangers at the Redwood parks recently found a site in which thieves had strung an elaborate system of cables and pulleys to move logs down a steep hillside near Elk Meadow -- thieves rob the forest of a vital resource, Denny said.
"Environmentally, this wood has more value than people realize," she said. "It's not just wood to be taken to a lumber mill."
That can be a tough point to make to a jury, officials said. It's easy to prove that the seven frontier-era revolvers and the Bowie knife stolen from Fort Davis National Historic Site in April were worth $29,950. Two gun collectors in North Carolina pleaded guilty to that crime in July and will be sentenced next month.
But jurors often can't see the value of a fallen log, which Denny said is why the jury acquitted Guffie of grand larceny and instead convicted him of lesser crimes that landed him a sentence of 120 days in jail.
Still, park officials consider the conviction a victory. They've taken a tough stand against poachers in the 18 months since Grediagin became chief ranger and decided to come down hard on thieves. It's an approach other parks have increasingly adopted in an effort to deter thefts and preserve their natural and historical resources.
"Until then, we would issue citations and release them," Grediagin said. "We were slapping wrists. I felt we weren't being effective. But our job is to protect the redwoods that were set aside by Congress for the enjoyment of all people. It's not an option. It's an obligation."San Francisco Chronicle
