(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- Deep into a California forest, up a steep hill and surrounded by ferns and branches, Ranger Branden Pero came across the victim, brutally attacked by ax and chainsaw. The clue that led him to this remote patch of the Redwood National and State Parks was a pile of rocks. The onetime stone barrier, now dismantled, had blocked access to a disused logging road. As Pero walked down the unpaved track to investigate in January last year, he came across the barest outline of a fresh path. It led directly to the crime scene.
The victim was a tree. Specifically, it was a burl—a rounded protrusion from an ancient redwood that bulged out from the lower portion of the trunk. Burls contribute to a forest’s complex ecosystem of growth and regeneration. In the eyes of collectors, their rich and intricate grains make them prized pieces that can be crafted into tables, bowls, and other objects. Taking any plant from a national park is a violation of multiple U.S. laws; taking and selling old-growth redwood, which takes hundreds of years to develop, strikes Pero as particularly egregious.
“It’s never going to be the way it was,” he says, standing in front of the ravaged tree stump, its cavity extending above and around him.
In the past, unless Pero caught criminals in the act, his chances of identifying them and attempting to administer justice were slim. But technology has improved the odds. On the day he discovered the site, remaining chunks of burl told Pero that the perpetrators hadn’t finished the job, so he hid several motion-triggered cameras around the area.
Plant theft in U.S. parks is worsening. Instagram and Twitter feeds have helped stoke the desire for obscure flora—not just burls. In Asia demand is growing for various succulents, which until recently nestled inconspicuously in crannies along the coastline parks of California. In the past two years in several busts, agents have intercepted troves of thousands en route to South Korea and Japan. Ginseng and saguaro, found mostly in the eastern U.S. and Arizona, respectively, are also vulnerable to thieves.
In 1890 preservationist John Muir wrote a pair of influential articles in the Century Magazine that helped establish Yosemite National Park and bolstered the nascent park movement overall. Even then, Muir battled Gifford Pinchot, the first chief of the U.S. Forest Service, and other leaders of the conservationist movement who were proponents of using U.S. resources sustainably for mining, logging, and other commercial purposes. Many entrepreneurs in rural areas bristled at new restrictions; environmentalists argued they didn’t go far enough.
A modern-day version of this conflict unfolds regularly at the redwood shops that dot the thoroughfares of Northern California. Prized for its beauty and ability to withstand rot, the wood can be sold legitimately if it’s been harvested from private property. A carved bench might go for $750 to $1,000; more elaborate pieces can fetch $5,000 or more. Burl, with its intricate patterns that can resemble lace and feathers, is often sliced into slabs to best display the beauty of the wood. The pieces, irregularly edged round or oval shapes, can measure from a foot or two to 10 feet in diameter.
In between commercial smelt fishing and heading the local volunteer fire department, James Simmons runs Wagon Wheel Burl, on the east side of Highway 101 as it winds through the tiny town of Orick. At a shed behind his shop, he rolls back a door to show off a personal collection of burl slabs, including one about 4 feet across with a particularly fine shape and a pattern reminiscent of a tiger’s striped coat. Last year, a hobbyist offered to buy it for $500 to use as an inlay in pool cues; Simmons confesses to feeling happy when the customer decided to go with another piece, allowing Simmons to hold on to the slab.
He takes a less sentimental approach when it comes to the redwood parks—the main operations center is just a few feet up the highway from Wagon Wheel. “I’m not a big fan of park rangers,” he says. To his mind, many of the parks’ rules are “stupid,” particularly a regulation banning removal of redwood pieces that wash up on the beach—part of the park—at the mouth of Redwood Creek. The wood just ends up floating out to sea and clogging shipping lanes, he says, when it could be gathered and carved. “It’s a good natural resource going to waste.”
Simmons doesn’t buy redwood from peddlers he suspects got it from the parks, but he can’t say whether other vendors in the area follow the same policy.
Pero believes the burl thief was banking on a willing buyer. The ranger developed his appreciation for both nature and law enforcement growing up fishing and hunting in Redding, Calif., where his father handled maintenance operations for nearby Whiskeytown National Recreation Area. Most years, the family vacationed in the park where he works now. “I was brought up in a way where I was recreating in the outdoors everywhere,” he says.
The damaged tree Pero discovered in January off May Creek was not Pero’s first criminal case involving a plant victim. As a member of the National Park Service’s law enforcement division, he’d prosecuted boaters for destroying protected seagrass while he was assigned to Everglades National Park in Florida. Pero also regularly apprehends drug dealers and helps the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office respond to domestic abuse cases. He carries a .40-caliber SIG Sauer pistol and stashes a shotgun, a rifle, extra ammunition, and protective body armor in his truck. “These aren’t the rangers from when we were kids,” says Simmons. “ ‘Here’s a bird, look at this flower.’ No.”
Pero retrieved the memory cards the month after he’d set up his cameras. The images had captured a light-colored truck driving onto the track and its driver emerging from the cab. The man was somebody Pero had seen around Orick: Derek Hughes.
In March, Pero served a search warrant on Hughes, who lives in a tumbledown shack behind a house a short drive from the crime scene. Pero and his colleagues found a stack of redwood by a fence, plus redwood slabs hidden under a tarpaulin. More pieces lay scattered around a small workshop. All told, Pero and his team removed 32 pieces. After examining the haul, a ranger told a judge that the wood likely matched the tree at the May Creek site.
Humboldt County Deputy District Attorney Adrian Kamada has charged Hughes with seven counts, among them conspiracy to commit a crime and vandalism, both felonies. “My client maintains his innocence,” Hughes’s attorney, Luke Brownfield, a county public defender, says. He “plans on taking the case to trial.”
Kamada is becoming the go-to prosecutor for thefts of this type. He’s consulted with prosecutors from other coastal counties, aiming for the toughest possible penalties. In June last year, he successfully secured felony convictions for three poachers who’d been caught two months earlier with more than 2,000 valuable rose-shaped succulents known as dudleya. They came from the cliffs by Humboldt Lagoons State Park, just south of Orick. “The recreational stuff I love to do is all connected to the parks,” says Kamada, who grew up fishing, kayaking, and surfing in the area. “Trying to find ways to protect that is why I became a prosecutor.”
Sixteen months after identifying Hughes, Pero is frustrated that the burl bust hasn’t yet gone to trial, given court delays. He hopes a strong sentence might discourage others so the redwoods can grow in peace. “I want my kid to be able to come out here and see the same things I saw,” he says. “Future generations.”
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