Untended timber often target of crafty thieves, foresters say
Source: Arkansas Democrat Gazette, by Nancy Cole
August 12, 2007
The most common victims of timber theft are those who can least afford it, said Mark Reed, the Arkansas Forestry Commission’s fire management officer.
Reed oversees four full-time criminal investigators and 12 part-time law enforcement officers who handle arson, equipment vandalism, dumping and timber theft cases that occur on about 16 million acres of nonfederal forestland in Arkansas. In 2006, the commission’s investigators opened 91 new timber-theft cases and closed 117. Through June, they had opened 37 new cases and closed 33.
“Unscrupulous buyers tend to prey upon the elderly, illiterate and minorities,” Reed said. Absentee landowners with small tracts of timber are particularly at risk, he said.
Timber theft isn’t sexy, said Jim Baldwin, who has investigated such cases for nearly 20 years. “Nobody comes to your house, sticks a knife to your throat and says ‘Give me your trees. ’”
Timber theft is a white-collar crime, and the successful prosecution of timber thieves involves lots of paperwork, said Baldwin, who works for the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry in Monroe. “In Louisiana we probably arrest 60 to 70 people a year that steal about a million dollars worth of timber,” he said.
Because timber is such a valuable commodity, the theft of only a small portion of a state’s total annual timber harvest can amount to millions of dollars. In Arkansas, for example, between 1995 and 2005, an estimated 527. 5 million cubic feet of softwoods and 333. 6 million cubic feet of hardwoods were harvested annually, according to the U. S. Forest Service.
Mike Nolan, a forester with Stevens Forestry Service Inc. in El Dorado, believes the most common type of theft occurs when dishonest timber buyers persuade landowners to sell their timber at prices well-below the fair market value.
“More timber is stolen ‘ legally’ than any other way,” Nolan said. Many landowners probably never even realize they’ve lost a lot of money, he said.
“Maybe they’ve got $ 100, 000 worth of timber and they sold it for $ 50, 000,” Nolan said. “They’ll go to their graves happy they got $ 50, 000 for timber they inherited from pa-paw.”
Louisiana civil statutes require timber buyers to pay a landowner at least 50 percent of the fair market value for their timber, said Baldwin, and loggers in Louisiana are legally bound to pay a landowner in full within 30 days of completing a logging job. Although Arkansas has no comparable “fair market value” law, timber buyers have just 45 days to pass along any payments that are due to landowners, Reed said.
That law, Act 1247 of 2001, was passed shortly after the conviction of Danny and Charlotte Washington. The Hot Springs couple was found guilty by a federal jury in February 2000 of five counts of mail fraud and aiding and abetting the commission of mail fraud.
“They stole timber all the way from Little Rock to Winfield, La., and in many cases they never paid the people the first penny,” said Nolan, the El Dorado forester, who testified in the federal criminal trial and in a civil case against the Washingtons.
Testimony during the four-day criminal proceeding revealed that the couple began identifying absentee timberland owners in 1990 by examining public land and tax records in Arkansas and Louisiana. Contacting those owners by mail and phone, the Washingtons offered to “selectively harvest” their trees. Once the contracts were signed, at prices well-below market value, the couple sold the timber to loggers for clear-cutting, rather than selective harvesting that would have left many trees in place. Subsequently, the Washingtons made only nominal payments to a handful of victims who sued them in civil cases.
Charlotte Washington was “persuasive, convincing and reassuring,” especially when evading payment, said Kyra Jenner, an assistant U. S. attorney in Fort Smith who prosecuted the case.
“One woman in her early 90 s came and testified, and she was spellbinding because she could very articulately recite the conversations that Mrs. Washington had with her about how quickly she was going to pay,” Jenner said.
U. S. District Judge Robert T. Dawson sentenced both of the Washingtons to serve 87 months in prison, increasing their sentences because of the vulnerable nature of their victims and because they had supervised two other people involved in the scheme. The couple was ordered to pay nearly $ 818, 000 in restitution to 41 victims in 13 states.
The Washingtons represented a particularly egregious example of timber theft. Far more common are simple encroachments across property lines, said Kelly Robbins, executive vice president of the Arkansas Forestry Association.
Once so-called cutovers are detected, they tend to be settled promptly through financial reimbursements, said Ron Bell, a Batesville landowner who serves as south-central vice president of the National Woodland Owners Association.
“There really haven’t been, in recent years, blatant cases of timber theft — where a harvester goes in to a 40-acre tract of timber and harvests it and suddenly disappears,” Bell said. One relatively large case involved a logger who diverted timber, he said. The logger was harvesting for a Poinsett County farmer who “realized that the logger was hauling what we refer to as the ‘butt cut’ of the hardwood trees to a separate mill” and claiming them for his own account, Bell said. “Probably 50 percent to 60 percent of the value of the tree is in that first cut of the log, because it’s larger and has the higher grade lumber in it.” The occurrence of timber theft tends to rise and fall with timber prices, Bell said. “When prices are high, the timber is valuable enough, I guess, to take the risk.”
PREVENTING THEFT Some Arkansans with large forest holdings have turned to high-tech solutions to protect themselves from timber theft, said Jim Foster, a senior forester with Kingwood Forestry Services Inc. in Monticello.
Kingwood installs hidden motion-sensitive surveillance cameras for one large Timberland Investment Management Organization when harvests are under way on property it manages, Foster said.
“We’ll check the truck scale tickets against the photo record and make sure that they match up,” he said, referring to the scales used to weigh timber trucks when they arrive at a mill to deliver timber.
Such monitoring systems are not feasible for most private nonindustrial forest landowners, who own an estimated 10. 8 million acres of Arkansas forestland, Foster said. And because most timber contracts give loggers a 12- to 18-month window in which to complete a harvest, direct supervision usually is impractical.
Maintaining clearly marked property lines is probably the single best step that forest landowners can take to protect their timber, Foster said. “Anybody who’s looking to pull a shenanigan is not going to go onto land that’s clearly marked,” he said.
Pat DuBose, a principal with Davis Forestry Consultants PLLC in Little Rock, agrees.
Well-marked properties are “kind of like the houses with the security alarm and the Doberman,” DuBose said. “There are just easier places to go ply your trade than where we’ve got our signs.”
Simply visiting timberland on a regular basis also is a good idea.
“We’ve got people as far away as Seattle that — once or twice a year — all we do for them is drive and make sure their property hasn’t had a timber trespass,” DuBose said. Leasing timberland to hunting clubs also helps to prevent theft by increasing surveillance.
Professional help is available for forest landowners who are preparing to sell timber.
“Even if you’re reasonably knowledgeable about timber — which a lot of people that own timber aren’t — there’s no way for you to look out there and know whether you have 60 tons an acre or 70 tons, or whether $ 30 is a fair price or it really should be $ 34,” DuBose said.
Foster said consulting foresters regularly conduct timber sales, clearly delineating the terms of the sale and inviting only qualified bidders to participate.
In selecting professional assistance, landowners should look for certain qualifications, such as basic forestry training and continuing education, Foster said. The Arkansas Board of Registration for Foresters, for example, maintains a list of all “registered foresters” in the state. Many of those foresters also are certified by the Society of American Foresters, and many private foresters also are members of the Association of Consulting Foresters of America, he said.
Forest landowners also can turn to the Arkansas Forestry Association, which publishes the Arkansas Forestland Management Resource Guide, a directory of members who can provide professional and technical assistance. The Arkansas Timber Producers Association also maintains a database of Arkansas loggers who have attended their training courses, which focus on safety issues. Timber theft
What it is:
• “Contractual theft” can occur
when a buyer arranges to purchase
timber at unreasonably low prices.
• Honest loggers may inadvertently cross property lines while harvesting on adjacent land and illegally cut trees.
• Rogue loggers may trespass and harvest trees without a
landowner’s knowledge or permission.
• Harvested trees may be
misreported and diverted for the benefit of someone other than the landowner. How to prevent it: • Identify and mark property lines. • Inspect timberland regularly. • Cultivate good neighbors and encourage leaseholders to monitor the property. • Know what timber is worth before selling it; seek professional assistance to determine timber volumes and values. • Get more than one bid. • Check references of potential timber buyers. • Demand a written contract that specifies what will be harvested, at what price and to which mill it will be delivered. The contract should specify how and when the landowner will be paid; “lumpsum” and “pay-as-cut” contracts are the most common. • Track pay-as-cut sales carefully, monitoring the logging operation and reconciling each load that leaves the property with each load that is received by the mill. • Maintain good records for every timber sale. • Report thefts immediately to the county sheriff’s office or the local Arkansas Forestry Commission office. Arkansas-Democrat Gazette
