To Catch A Redwood Thief

Park rangers use hidden cameras to capture tree poachers in national forests.

- Sarah McBride

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.