Somehow, California's redwoods have survived tens of thousands of years of fires, floods and human scorched Earth logging.
Poachers are becoming a significant problem in the state and national parks along the California's north coast.
Steve Chaney, Redwood National and State Parks Superintendent: "It's a very serious problem. When people are taking the very essence of what the park was established for--we're Redwood National Park--that's a big problem."
Redwood National Park Superintendent Steve Chaney knows that lumber is king in Humboldt County. Most of it is harvested legitimately, but some of it is actually stolen from protected redwood groves that are thousands of years old.
Chaney: "It's really very difficult to know how much of it really goes on, but we know that there's enough of it going that we've detected it, and that usually means that there's quite a but more that we haven't heard about."
Park rangers say there you don't have to look far for evidence of timber poaching. Ranger Laura Denny showed us a wood poaching site that was discovered about a year and a half ago.
"What we found was a typical site, where the tree had been cut into three foot sections called shake bolts," said Denny. "Wood poachers lowered the shake bolts down piece by piece to the valley floor, where they transported it out of the park."
The poachers were caught before they got all the wood out.
Pat Grediagin, Chief Ranger: "People can walk right by a site and unless they are attuned to what they are looking at they might not realize that something is gone."
Removing timber from the park causes irreversible damage. Some of these trees will take 500 years to decompose.
Grediagin: "There's wildlife that's impacted. There's other tree species that would use it for nursery log. They fill an ecological role and that gets compromised to a certain degree when those trees are removed."
It's a constant battle for rangers who see everything from stolen timber to these freshly cut burls. Rangers believe they were destined for local gift shops as souvenirs.
"It's hard to determine if they are coming from this tree - or they coming from a tree outside the park...unless we actually catch someone," said Grediagin.
They do quite often.
Ronald Vaughn and a friend were arrested in July 2005.
Ronald Vaughn, Convicted Poacher: "We just started cutting on that one piece of wood&that was my second time out there."
The two cut up a fallen log, floated the pieces down a creek, and then planned to collect them to sell to a lumber mill that converts them to shingles.
Vaughn: "You got to have a saw, a sledge hammer, a wedge, slice - it's pretty physical work."
At most, the wood was worth a couple thousand dollars. Vaughn blames a lack of legitimate jobs in the region, but rangers say that many poachers use stolen redwood to fund their addiction to methamphetamines, a growing problem on California's north coast.
Vaughn pleaded guilty to petty theft and was sentenced to County jail. He's now back in jail for violating the terms of his probation when he tested positive for using meth. He says his poaching days are over.
That's good news for the rangers in Redwood National and State Park, but it's only a small part of the overall problem that jeopardizes one California's greatest treasures.
"There is only less than 4 percent of the original forest left and we want to do everything that we can to protect them so for a number of reasons in addition to biological it's important that we protect these forests as they are for future generations," said Grediagin.
Rangers say that most poachers work under the cover of darkness. Most of the looted sites are discovered long after poachers have been there, which make it more difficult for authorities to track down the thieves.ABC 7 News
