Victim's Guide to Timber Theft

The Victim’s Guide to Timber Theft provides comprehensive information about the magnitude of timber theft in this country, and its geographic breadth. It also talks about who is most likely to become a victim and the difficulties a private landowner victim will encounter when losing timber to theft, ranging from the methods timber thieves commonly use to hide their activity to the weakness of laws in this country.

The topics covered proceed from the methods of targeting victims mentioned above into criminal and civil recourse possibilities. It spends time on the obstacles both the thief and the law can put in a victim’s path and discusses the practical impact these have on property rights. It also discusses harassment of the victim by the thief, with examples of incidents

Considerable detail follows about the “gate fees” imposed by authorities along the path of justice, including surveys, professional timber consultant fees, witness fees, and legal fees.

It goes on to discuss the problem victims meet in obtaining accurate loss valuation, in simply finding an attorney for a civil case, in impediments to finding witnesses willing to testify, and in difficulties and interpretations that the victim may meet in court, It lays out some of the reasons why timber theft cases may drag on for ten or more years.

The Guide ends by summing up how these obstacles incentivize timber theft in this country, discusses the laws across states, and finishes by concluding that many of these obstacles cannot be removed until victims band together and the attitudes that prevail in this country about the problem of timber theft change.