Hot logs: timber theft on the National Forests.

It's rampant, it's blatant, and it's becoming clear that in some cases the thieves have inside help.

The cry of resource forester Jenny Grant, more shrill than any bald eagle I'd heard that morning, signaled the discovery of one of the largest timber-theft cases in Alaska's history.

Trekking a remote island beach on the Tongass National Forest as a volunteer photographer, I pushed my way through the shoreline's alder curtain to reach Jenny, our leader. I found her, now almost speechless, beside the freshly sawn, still-pungent, four-foot-diameter butt of a former Alaska redcedar tree. It had been "moss-capped" to hide a serious federal crime, timber theft.

This, mind you, in the supposedly protected, Congressionally designated South Prince of Wales Wilderness, under Forest Service stewardship.

Before day's end, Jenny, recreation technician John Gowan, and I had abandoned our kayak-route survey project, landed our Boston Whaler outboard at a number o beaches up and down remote Klakas Inlet, and found more of the same. Much more.

Timber piracy I call it: Persons unknown approach deserted beaches in a small and fairly quiet tow boat (maybe at night), quickly felling choice redcedars an Sitka spruces some 250-plus years old. They pull the heisted logs off the beach with a boat and cable and tow them to secret destinations for big bucks.

Prince of Wales Island is a pushover for timber pirates: It's big enough to contain a couple of Rhode Islands, has nearly 1,000 miles of forested, sparsely populated, heavily secluded shoreline, and is visited by few law-enforcement patrols from the Forest Service or anyone other agency. Well, maybe this could happen only in Alaska, I told myself on that sad day in 1989.

How wrong I was.

Crimes Against Trees

My eyes have been opened wide by some recent work I've done on the ground with Forest Service special agents, a dozen or more interviews, scans of Congressional testimony, and then--most revealing--some low-profile visits with loggers in the West, have opened my eyes. Major timber theft is occurring throughout our National Forest System, and some of the thieves who commit such crimes have inside help.

Some Forest Service managers, supposedly dedicated to conserving and protecting our natural resources, know about the problem. They know where it's happening, who's doing it, and how. They've been told about it repeatedly by their own law enforcers. Yet they sometimes do little or nothing about it.

The biggest loser in this assault on our federal lands? The environment--more specifically, the concept of sustainable forestry, whose foundation rests upon responsible forest guardianship. One example is the blatant, unlawful felling o a large number of spotted-owl "leave trees" on California's Klamath National Forest in the late 1980s--acts that damaged that habitat for owl nesting for th next 250 years, according to Forest Service wildlife biologist Edith Asrow.

Every National Forest

"It's clear that timber theft exists on every one of the 156 national forests," says Hank Kashdan, who heads timber-theft investigations for the Forest Service in Washington, DC.

How big, monetarily, is the problem? Guesses by Forest Service people range fro a highly conservative $10 million to $100 million or more over recent years. Bu no one in the agency really knows, and that's a big part of the problem.

At a California community forestry meeting in 1992, Kashdan described an Oregon case in which a log scaler "shaved [that is, underreported actual timber volume approximately $50,000 every month for 25 years," to the benefit of the lumber mill--$15 million worth of fraud on this case alone.

Learning about numerous cases like this helped me to understand why a recent major study, conducted by Brian Boyle at the University of Washington's College of Forest Resources, showed that two-thirds of 620 randomly selected Forest Service employees feel that national-forest timber harvesting (and other forest use) is not sustainable for the next 100 years. But that study considered conventional harvesting techniques, and not the additional depletion of our forests through theft.

If our timber is also being plundered in unknown amounts, how can we possibly manage for sustained forests?

Cheating the Government

One morning this past spring, in a Pacific Northwest lumber town, I asked "Brad," a veteran logger who sat with coffee cup cradled in both hands, how a guy can cheat the government. He smiled as though my question was naive.

"Moving [timber-sale] boundaries is the big way." In other words, felling and hauling off timber outside the contracted sale area.

"Plus, [Forest Service] timber cruisers can be bribed to benefit loggers. Government documents can be changed. Mill managers can pressure scalers to 'cull' more timber and declare a higher percentage of defects in each log [for which the mill pays less or even nothing].

"It's so rotten out there you wouldn't believe it," Brad affirmed.

Deep in the Sierra Nevadas in the Forest Service's California region, another logger added, "Cheat? It's easy. You can switch brands [identification marks embedded in the end of a log]. You can drive [a load of logs] right by a scalin shack. You can cut trees that weren't marked [by the Forest Service]. You can d a midnight run.

And, I might add, a thief can literally paint his way to a small fortune: He ca steal a quart of special-formula, "exclusive" Forest Service tracer paint--wort between $400 and $5,000 per can on the black market. Then he can chainsaw existing Forest Service-painted tree markings off boundary trees, walk a couple of hundred feet off the timber sale into the boonies, and paint his own new "boundary" trees, adding thousands of dollars to his "take"--most often without getting caught.

The stolen tracer paint, by the way, can come right out of the truck-bed "cross boxes" of Forest Service pickups, whose TSAs (timber-sale administrators) haven't locked it up as they should.

Much of this "boundary jumping" takes place at minimal risk to timber thieves. They know they can work almost with impunity between approximately 4:30 p.m. on a Friday and 7:30 a.m. the following Monday, when most Forest Service timber people are off the forest.

"They're regular as clockwork," a logger told me.

In this era of budgetary downstaffing, agency TSAs, to say nothing of law enforcers, are typically spread mighty thin over the sprawling landscape, where one remote sale may be located a two-hour drive from the next. This invites daytime theft as well.

Meanwhile, communities near our national forests suffer economically because stolen timber can rob them of the 25 percent share of local Forest Service timber receipts they receive to help fund local roads and schools.

Closer to the threatened land, the majority of honest loggers and lumber-mill operators are hurting, too, because thieves screw up competitive free enterprise.

"We just can't compete against loggers who bid low on a timber sale, then make up the difference by stealing extra timber," laments John Severski, who logs with his son on California's Tahoe National Forest.

An Inside Job

Approximately 100 cases of timber theft were being investigated last year on th national forests of California, Oregon, Washington, and Alaska, and it appears that many of them are taking place right under the noses of the Forest Service.

Worse, sworn whistle-blower testimony before Congress confirms that law-enforcement people within the agency are routinely hindered in carrying out their duties, often by district rangers, forest supervisors, and timber-management officers.

Late last year, a General Accounting Office survey of 110 Forest Service criminal investigators, enforcement officers, retirees, and other career staffers turned up no fewer than 180 incidents of alleged law-enforcement interference and retaliation.

Consider this testimony given during a watershed hearing of the House Subcommittee on Civil Service held last October 5:

Dennis Shrader, a 14-year Forest Service special agent from the Pacific Northwest:

". . . in the Layton and Bartlett case [on Oregon's Ochoco and Deschutes national forests], one sale was for 600,000 board-feet, but the company took 900,000 board-feet. Forest Service managers argued that the agency's 'cruise' had inaccurately estimated how much timber was within the boundaries. But we ha proof from the company's own records that their cruise was accurate to within one to two percent."

". . . a forest supervisor provided advance warning to an industry giant that w were investigating theft."

"The [district ranger] who threatened me [never to go over his head] was among those enjoying industry-financed...trips to Lake Tahoe for himself as well as other Forest Service employees and wives."

"The agency previously had detected and ignored indications of...contract harvest fraud numerous times during seven years of theft and damage on three national forests in Region Six (Pacific Northwest)."

Michael Nitsch, a federal enforcement officer for 22 years, listed these types of Forest Service management reprisals for agency law enforcers "and those who disregard politics in doing their jobs":

* Unsatisfactory performance appraisals

* Career stagnation 

* Yanking agents from cases

* Defunding cases

* Retaliatory investigations, including one five-hour grilling of a special agent by superiors about "unspecified complaints."

That hearing was more than an employee whistle-blower walk-through.

Charles Turner, a former U.S. attorney and circuit court judge in Oregon, described the investigation of the Circle De Lumber Company on Oregon's Deschutes National Forest:

"On December 27, 1990, Circle De personnel were observed removing truckloads of chips from the Plucker timber sale. . . without load tickets required by the sale. . . through a chance visit by a substitute timber-sale administrator. . .

"The investigation established that 18 truckloads of chips worth over $3,000 under Forest Service contract and almost $50,000 at mill prices had been remove without payment to the Forest Service.

"A further review. . . revealed that some 15 unauthorized boundary and trespass trees had also been removed, and numerous orange-marked 'leave' trees had been cut.

"When the Plucker incident was eventually reported to the U.S. Attorney's office, management on the Deschutes National Forest expressed a preference to allow Circle De to continue logging the sale notwithstanding commencement of a criminal investigation."

The former U.S. attorney then outlined details of a similar incident on the nearby Winema National Forest a year and a half earlier in which 49 truckloads of logs worth "tens of thousands of dollars" had been removed illegally from th Southgate timber sale, and how "...the Forest Service made the unilateral decision to resolve the matter by issuing $250 petty offense citations to Circl De and two of its employees....

"Not only does Forest Service management not support law enforcement, but they wish to control it in order that historical practices be permitted to continue without interference," Turner concluded.

Special agent Nitsch perhaps best summarized the essence of the timber-theft fiasco:

"The name of the game is to cut and produce timber for the industry. [Forest Service] managers whose job is to get out the cut view the timber industry as their customers. They don't like law enforcement, because putting a customer under criminal investigation threatens business relationships."

Quite a "load ticket," as the loggers would say.

This historic hearing--linked with several others and with scathing timber-thef reports on CNN and on ABC's Day One, plus a comprehensive series of revealing features in California's Sacramento Bee--seemed to confirm the reality and the pervasiveness of log theft, and direct Forest Service complicity therewith.

A Sick System

How could all this be, I wondered, thinking of the scores of hard-working, dedicated, upfront, knowledgeable Forest Service staffers with whom I relate on our national forests. Answering that question took further digging to identify, and then to understand the components of, a sick system that closely links the Forest Service with timber thievery.

Driving the abuse, I now believe, is a decades-long, self-serving, sort of "revolving" three-part mechanism. It works like this:

"Getting out the cut" is for many Forest Service managers synonymous with job security and advancement. The volume of timber sold is discussed regularly at managers' performance reviews with those in the timber-production loop, i.e. district rangers. Those in the agency who "produce," by efficiently preparing timber-sale areas for logging, advance within the system.

Heavy (and perhaps excessive) timber production on our national forests translates into greater profits for forest-products companies; it drives their success, their survivability in a highly competitive business. Therefore they are willing to pay to politically promote maximum Forest Service timber production on our national forests.

Heavy-duty lobbying by these same companies, often through the trade associations they finance, influences key members of Congress (often influentia Senators from the West) to appropriate the necessary funds for--you guessed it--more timber cutting as recommended by the Forest Service. In other words, timber-cutting allocations are often established by the Forest Service and Congress through the budgetary appropriations process--with industry looking on with high interest.

In another interesting twist, I have learned that a lumber mill will usually pa the Forest Service for "hot" logs as well as for the legal ones (unless the entire load circumvents the scaling process). But the logs nevertheless are stolen; their unauthorized removal is a federal crime.

If our forests are being pirated to the tune of at least tens of millions of dollars, and if the Forest Service is helping by looking the other way, how could these same forests possibly be sustainable--spotted-owl logging restrictions or not? And how can the agency legitimately talk ecosystem management, forest health, or serious stewardship of this invaluable national resource while it allows timber thieves to operate with near impunity?

Disillusioned and disappointed with an agency I have known and admired since my earliest years, I pulled on my boots and hauled off on a solemn hike in the woods behind my home. "Forest Service," I muttered aloud, "you owe us some answers. You owe us some action."

TIMBER THEFT: HOW IT'S DONE

SCALING, TICKETING:

* A log scaler purposely undervalues logs by lying about the wood volume, species, or amount of defect.

* A scaler hacks into his hand-held computer to alter previously recorded log values after the logs are sent into a mill.

* Logs are trucked directly into a mill, bypassing the scalers.

* Load tickets, which are supposed to accompany each load of logs trucked fro a logging site, are taken from the logs once they are delivered and are reused on other truckloads of logs before being turned in to the government.

BIDDING, BRANDING:

* Companies rig bids by agreeing before an auction who will bid on what timbe sales or who will offer what price.

* The purchaser of two nearby timber sales stamps logs from the more-expensiv sale with the brand that should be used to mark only those logs from the less-expensive sale. That enables the purchaser to pay less for the expensive logs.

CUTTING:

* A logger moves the Forest Service's boundary ribbons and paper signs to expand a sale boundary to include trees that were not supposed to be logged.

* Stolen or fake tracer paint is used to expand sale boundaries or mark extra trees to be cut down.

* Trees intended to be left for wildlife are cut down. Chainsaws are used to remove the section of the log that is marked with "no-cut" tracer paint, or tha log section is buried in a slash pile.

* The ends of federal logs are sliced off to remove yellow tracer paint. Logs then are exported in violation of the federal ban or taken directly into the mill without being scaled.

SOURCES: Federal investigators, court cases.

Log-Theft Lingo

HERE ARE some key items and definitions that can help you understand the furtive, sophisticated game of timber thievery:

BOUNDARY-JUMPING: Illegally felling trees outside official Forest Service timber-sale boundaries.

CHERRY-PICKING: Stealing the very highest-grade trees in a timber-sale.

DOUBLE-STUMPAGE: The amount (generally twice the going rate) that contract-violating logging companies sometimes pay the Forest Service when they've been caught swiping timber. Such a small penalty doesn't constitute muc of a deterrent, special agents agree.

HAND-HELDS: Mini-computers, also known as "data recorders," used by log scalers to record timber dimensions at log-scaling stations. Data are sometimes lost or faked.

MIDNIGHT LOGGING: After-hours or weekend runs by logging trucks, made to circumvent timber-sale or scaling-station controls.

MOSS-CAPPING: In Pacific Northwest rainforests, placing moss atop stumps of recently cut trees to disguise illegal logging. In drier forests, thieves pile slash atop "hot" stumps.

PUMPKINS: Especially valuable trees, sometimes targeted for theft.

SCALING: Measuring the length and diameter of enroute timber at scaling stations, and grading its quality, for valuation purposes before it enters the mill. A crime hotspot because of opportunities for fraud. Some trucks illegally bypass scaling stations completely.

TRACER PAINT: Specially formulated tree-marking paint used (supposedly exclusively) by the Forest Service. Several secret, key elements can easily be identified to check its authenticity.

TSA: Timber-sale administrator for the Forest Service.

WAFERING: Slicing off the end of an illegally taken log to remove a brand, pain marks, or other tree- identification evidence.

A Legacy of Law Enforcement

A FORMER CHIEF has said, "The Forest Service is not a law-enforcement agency." Not true. That agency has been protecting resources, lives, and property in our national forests since at least 1905, when agency employees were first authorized by Congress to make arrests.

Grazing conflicts on national-forest lands (often sheep vs. cattle owners) provided plenty of enforcement action on California's Sierra National Forest as early as 1902, when ranger George Naylor "evicted" four sheepmen and their stoc because of illegal use: He ignited a sheep corral and drove the animals "beyond the forest borders in short order," according to an early account.

Since then, moonshining, arson, drugs, crowd control, potentially lethal tree-spiking by radicals, homicide, and other acts have helped shape today's law-enforcement structure within the Forest Service. Unfortunately, and usually because of pressures to produce timber, some agency officials have not been strong supporters of law enforcement.

"My first year [at Forest Service headquarters in 1972]," recounts retiree Jim

Evans in a Forest Service history, compiled by the agency, "a deputy chief stoo up and said he was totally opposed to people doing law-enforcement work. My reaction was to say... when you were a ranger, maybe 100 people a year would visit the forest; now we have a million."

One special agent recently told me that as late as the 1980s, "armed enforcemen officers were sometimes compared with the Gestapo" within the agency.

Flashing red lights under tall green trees still rankle some Forest Service employees--even after nearly 90 years of enforcement dedication by those who Serve.

Crimes Beyond Timber

TIMBER THEFT is by far the biggest-money crime occurring in our national forest today. But consider these additional assaults against the environment--and society--on our national and state forests and parks:

* Early this year, timber-foliage thievery reared its head in Washington state. Unknown persons felled more than 100 western redcedar trees for their pungent boughs (possibly for use in freshener sprays), leaving the logs. Resource damage: $30,000.

* In mid-April seven men believed to be part of a paramilitary organization were arrested after Forest Service special agents and others found weapons, military gear, and bunkers up to 40 feet long on California's Angeles and Sequoia national forests.

* In Mid-May near Idyllwild on the Angeles National Forest, two German tourists were shot by unknown assailants in an apparent robbery. One died.

* In a bizarre federal crime late in 1992 on Alaska's Tongass National Forest an unknown arsonist torched a 51-year-old totem pole--part of a pattern of escalating vandalism in that area.

Yosemite National Park in California is particularly vulnerable to crime. Last summer Kim Aufhauser, an enforcement ranger I'd met earlier on a wildfire, took three rounds from an unseen assailant in Yosemite's High Sierras. Thanks to his "flak jacket" protection vest, he survived, but the suspect is still at large.

As Bob Andrews, chief of protection at Yosemite, explained, "We have up to 600,000 visitors in the valley in August, 6,000 to 7,000 vehicles on a busy day in a valley of about seven square miles. Because of budget cuts, we in law enforcement are down about 60 positions from 1974, working with 30-year-old radio repeaters and 20-year-old radars on patrol cars."

Adds Jim Tucker, a law-enforcement shift supervisor in the valley, "We're takin guns off visitors every day--for example an automatic pistol with laser sights and 90 rounds of ammo. And we're looking at possible emerging youth-gang activity. In this environment, resource violations like timber theft, poaching, and illegal fishing come up on the short end."

To top it all off, unscrupulous opportunists grow marijuana in unknown quantities in remote parts of the 750,000-acre national park, and in many national forests.

Herbert McLean, a prizewinning frequent contributor from the Pacific Northwest, has also written many articles for Law and Order, a leading law-enforcement magazine.