When Dave Potter of Cincinnati got a call from a cousin saying loggers were stealing timber from the family’s land in the Kentucky mountains, he grabbed a 12-gauge shotgun and headed south.

His cousin, Mark Combs, brandishing a .44-caliber Magnum, got there first and scared off the loggers. The poachers fled in a pickup truck, leaving behind two bulldozers.

When Potter arrived, he was shocked to see the devastation inflicted on the wild, wooded land his family has owned for seven generations. It’s the place where his mother was raised, the place where he spent his summers as a kid.

And now this high-tailing gang of chainsaw raiders had toppled 30 giant oak trees – some of them centuries old, five feet wide – leaving a wake of destruction and a field of stumps.

“They destroyed the whole mountaintop,” said Potter, who has had the logs appraised at $16,000 wholesale. “Those trees were amazing to look at. We’ll never be able to replace them.”

Forestry officials say timber theft is common in Ohio, Kentucky and nearby states that are rich in valuable hardwoods like oak and walnut. A white oak tree 50 inches in diameter is worth about $3,000 on the market.

Thieves regularly prowl and poach on private land where owners don’t live or where owners are elderly and might not hear the chainsaws.

Hardwoods like oak and walnut are used in furniture making and can be very valuable in domestic and foreign markets. Thieves usually operate in small groups, working lickety-split to haul the hot logs to mills. Trees wider than two feet in diameter are more valuable because they can be used for veneer.

But stealing timber, Potter would soon discover, is rarely prosecuted criminally because laws in most states say you must show intent to steal, which can be difficult to prove.

Encroaching loggers often use the alibi that they were hired by a neighboring property owner and that the boundaries were unmarked. Sometimes the neighbor is an accomplice.

Also, prosecution can be difficult because it’s hard to place a value on what was timbered. By the time authorities arrive at the crime scene, the logs often have been milled and sold.

The Ohio Division of Forestry is in the initial stage of researching other states’ laws and discussing with lawmakers in Columbus how to be more aggressive in preventing tree theft, said Andy Ware, assistant chief of the division.

With so few cases criminally prosecuted, it’s difficult to say how much money is lost to timber thieves.

“We definitely believe this is an area that needs examination,” said Ware. “The division is continuing to see ongoing reports on a weekly basis of timber theft.”

When Potter’s land was raided last November, he went to authorities in Letcher County, Ky., but was told there was nothing they could do, even though the poachers had left behind two very big clues – a pair of bulldozers, which he would have to give back to the illicit loggers.

“The sheriff said this is a civil matter,” said Potter. “He said, “You need to get a lawyer.”‘

Potter, a self-employed landscaper, couldn’t afford one. Instead, he contacted the Appalachian Roundtable, a Kentucky-based nonprofit social-service agency that has been helping victims of timber theft.

In the face of a probing press and pressure from the nonprofit group, Letcher County Prosecutor Edison Banks II opened a criminal case.

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Potter said the criminal case would not have happened without the prodding of Appalachian Roundtable Director Dea Riley, whom he described as “a fireball.”

Riley represents more than 100 victims of timber theft. She has put together a coalition of judges, legislators and law enforcers in her battle against rogue loggers.

When she heard about the Potter case, she mobilized her forces.

“I threw a statewide tantrum,” she said. “This is a big racketeering game – get ’em cut, haul ’em out and get ’em through the mill. And the sawmills are part of it. They know they are destroying evidence.”

Loggers in a timber theft case near Dayton didn’t have time to destroy evidence when Montgomery County Prosecutor Matt Heck ordered the seizure of a truckload of logs heading for a mill.

In one of the first, and probably the biggest, criminal cases in Ohio involving tree stealing, Heck dogged a couple of loggers who last July raided 40 acres within two neighboring properties, pillaging 232 trees.

The landowners were elderly, unaware of the intruders until it was too late.

“They just basically destroyed an entire forest,” Heck said. “They ravaged the area, raped the land and plugged the creeks. What was once a beautiful woods is no longer there.”

Two loggers were indicted on counts of receiving stolen property and criminal damaging. One was found not guilty. Sturgil Lowman of Lowman Lumber Co. was convicted and sentenced to 18 months in jail, a sentence that was suspended to probation.

The court has ordered Lowman to pay the landowners $113,677, plus $13,000 that he had paid to a straw man acting as an agent in the illegal deal. Lowman previously had lost at least three civil cases involving tree theft, Heck said.

“We’ve made it clear here that if we have more complaints like this, we’re taking them to trial,” said Heck.

In Northeast Ohio, Fred Bennett of Conneaut also was devastated when he discovered last June that four half-century-old trees – two walnuts and two butternuts – had vanished from family property now deeded to his son.

“My dad and I planted those trees in about 1952,” he said. “They’re gone now. We’ll never see them again.”

Bennett said a logger hired to cut trees on neighboring property came across the line. He and his son, Neil Bennett, could not get the city prosecutor to file criminal charges, so they filed a civil suit.

CM END OMALLEY

(Michael O’Malley is a reporter for The Plain Dealer of Cleveland. He can be contacted at momalley(at)plaind.com.)

2008-04-09-TIMBER-THEFT

AP-NY-04-09-08 1420EDT