Tree Thieves : Crime and Survival in North America's Woods (9780316497428) by Bourgon Lyndsie

Author:Bourgon, Lyndsie [Bourgon, Lyndsie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: None
ISBN: 9780316497428
Publisher: Hachette
Published: 2022-06-21T00:00:00+00:00

It was an absence that caught ranger Branden Pero’s eye, snagging his attention from the road to the turnoff near May Creek; the twinge of knowing that something was missing. Because his patrols normally include scanning the highway shoulders for signs of activity, Pero remembered that a pile of rocks normally sat to the left of the locked steel farm gate that separated Highway 101 from the creek. But on January 24, 2018, while on a standard patrol through Redwood National Park, he noticed that the stacked rocks had been scattered. Some had tumbled into a drainage ditch, while others were strewn around the gate itself.

About a quarter-mile up the road, Pero turned around and circled back. Parking his National Park Service work truck, he stepped out. To the left of the gate he saw tire tracks embedded in the earth where the rocks once sat. The impressions, spotty between the gate and the foliage, led to the middle of a small clearing along a path. Where the marks stopped, the ranger found a semicircle of sawdust and wood chips.

Pero pressed the Send button on the receiver pinned to the bulletproof vest he wears in the field, tilting his head slightly to the right to speak into it, and radioed ranger Seth Gainer back at the South Operations Center (SOC) about five miles south. “Looks like a cut site up here,” Pero reported. As Gainer confirmed that he was en route to provide backup, it began to rain.

May Creek is part of a network of aquatic pathways that stitch through the redwood ecosystem in northern California, ultimately draining into the Pacific Ocean. Its shores are thick with brush that’s difficult to cut a swath through, and it is not easy to reach or navigate. With his eyes to the ground, Pero followed what he identified as footprint and tire-tread indentations in the undergrowth. In some sections the brush had been flattened or crushed by something other than human feet, the shapes irregular.

Turning right, Pero noticed a desire line—not an official trail forged and maintained by park rangers, but one tramped down by a human’s simple urge to walk there, wide enough for a lone hiker. Desire lines, especially in a rain forest, are faint and easy to miss, but they are everywhere. Pero could see one leading up the hill.

Suddenly, though, it began to pour. Pero hadn’t brought a coat, so he ran to his truck and drove back to the SOC, where he changed into dry clothes and gathered some gear. He then drove back to the site, finding Gainer already working his way up the trail. The rain had stopped, but the air was still misty.

Camera in hand this time, Pero began to photograph the tracks. During ranger training he had learned to identify and assess the freshness of tire tracks in the woods, but it was growing up in the forest (Pero is from Redding, California) that had taught him to examine the tracks in depth. Over

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