Lumber Theft in Mountain Park!
Lead story in the Winston Salem Journal…not sure how the local paper doesn’t even mention this… this sort of thing just pisses me off!!!! Not the paper missing the story, but the raping of the earth by loggers….Lake Laurel is just a few miles from our house.
MOUNTAIN PARK- A family’s retreat of more than 200 acres in the Mountain Park community of northwest Surry County has been scarred after loggers clear-cut nearly a quarter of the trees on it in the absence of its dying owner, who lived near Winston-Salem.
“When I first saw the damage, I was devastated,” said Sallie Mackie, whose aunt, Pearl Phillips, had nurtured the property since the 1960s and had transformed a low spot in the land into a 40-acre lake that the family cherished. “I was truly, truly devastated. We’re trying to find out about the laws.”
Mackie, a photographer who lives in Los Angeles, had spent the past year in the region taking care of Phillips, who died of heart problems in February. Mackie inherited the retreat, fondly called Lake Laurel, and she drove up to the property in April. That is when she discovered that about 45 acres had been logged.
The family doesn’t know who took the lumber, but whoever did it built a road into the back of the lot, avoiding a gated entry on another road. The family is unaware of any other logging being done near the property.
If the missing lumber is a case of theft, state officials say that would not be uncommon, but so many acres being taken at once is rare.
“Are these types of things that happen unwittingly? Somebody cutting the trees, and they go beyond the property line or purposely go beyond the line? Probably a mix of both,” said Jamie Kritzer, a spokesman for the N.C. Division of Forest Resources in Raleigh.
State foresters estimate – based on the new growth of seedlings at Mackie’s property – that the logging occurred in January and February. The family has filed a report with state foresters, who recently completed a survey of the damage. But local law enforcement has not been called.
Timber theft could be limited to a misdemeanor, foresters say.
“The bottom line is if Ms. Mackie were to call, the only way I could help her is to put her in touch with a list of private forestry consultants,” said Richard Cockerham, a forester for the N.C. Division of Forest Resources in Lenoir. A consultant would be able to come up with an estimate of how much lumber was cut and what it would be worth, he said.
Bill Overby, a private forester in Surry County, said he would estimate that the family lost $2,000 to $1,000 an acre, if the timber was mature.
Overby said that it would take at least a couple of months to cut as many as 45 acres.
“Once in a while we get called in where somebody inadvertently cut over the property line, and everybody wants to get it settled,” he said.
“This is a very unusual circumstance. I had another, off of Haystack Road. It was an absentee landowner,”Overby said. ” About 7 or 8 acres were cut in that case, he said.
Mackie said she is concerned now about erosion and other environmental problems that may occur as a result of the logging. She has contacted the Piedmont Land Conservancy and is discussing ways to prevent more damage. She also has an attorney, and they are trying to determine the best course of action for the family, which may involve a civil lawsuit, should they be able to find out who cut the timber.
“I’m so glad that my aunt didn’t have to see this. It would have broken her heart,” Mackie said. “My aunt had a rule: If you cut down one tree, it was just the one tree at a time…. (This) is just a hack job.”