Any of you come across deliberate sabotage?

[Brent Nowell]

I remember watching an x files episode way back when about prehistoric bugs inside giant redwoods. The loggers cut down the trees and released these cannibalistic insects that ate people at night.
Anywho this isn’t about that, this is about a comment made in the episode when they captured a survivor who was an eco terrorist. They mentioned that people like him were putting giant spikes or nails in trees deliberately to thwart the logging industry.

So, have any of you guys actually come across this in the bush during your professional career? Or is this all a bunch of flim flam.

 

[madhatte]

It is my understanding that this happened most commonly near Eugene OR in the 90's and sporadically elsewhere and elsewhen. I have not encountered it myself, but I have found plenty of non-sabotage metal in trees. I have also run into plenty of timber theft, trash dumping, and vandalism.

 

[catbuster]

I’ve walked up on equipment with smashed windows and spray paint on panels in the past. Nothing to really prevent it from being functional... Thankfully it’s been my experience people who are out to cause trouble aren’t really familiar with heavy equipment or any sort of logging equipment where it had to go out of service.... Imagine that?

Right now it seems like oil & gas are under fire more than logging. Just south of where I am there are all sorts of lawsuits and countersuits over a pipeline through an arboretum/research forest. Highway department already punted on putting a highway through there because of it too.

 

[ChoppyChoppy]

Have had fuel caps broken off, fuel stolen and water get poured in.

Fought the excavator last winter, still had a bit of water and it froze up several times.

 

[northmanlogging]

There are several large piles of old growth logs near darrington wa, that had to be culled because they where spiked, several truckloads.

Was a spate of log trucks getting torched... until some dude named Tre Arrow went to prison, then poof the arson went out overnight...

Think that was mostly in Oregon though.

Mostly up here we get bill hillies sport falling timber to steel firewood... or worse in a way shooting rifles onto the trees, where the timber then gets culled for having iron, cause every mill around here runs logs through a metal detector, any metal means that log is worthless

 

[northmanlogging]

I've personally had morons cut firewood out of my log decks...

Not really vandalism but still a waste of money and irritating

 

[northmanlogging]

Oh and the little hellspawn next door like to carve "naughty" words into the paint of my trucks...

If your going to raise future serial killers, at least let them use real swear words FFS

 

[ChoppyChoppy]

I've personally had morons cut firewood out of my log decks...

Not really vandalism but still a waste of money and irritating

Have had that happen.

Not only are they stealing, but they also make a mess. Start in the middle of the log and cut 6-8ft of it and keep working into the pile.
So then end up with a butt and top maybe 10ft each.
Hard to haul that on a truck meant to carry 40ft logs.

Caught a few guys a while back. "Well they were just laying there".

One guy claimed he was given the logs even.

When we pulled in with the log truck they were scattering like roaches. One guy hightailed it and left a Stihl 440 even! (They came to the shop and got it eventually. I had half a mind to keep it in trade of the ~$3000 of logs they took)
They even had a tractor there to load wood!

All the while we loaded logs, they circled around like a scene out of Maximum Overdrive.
I stayed there while my buddy went to offload and I had people trying to pull back in!

In ~3 days, almost 20 cords had been stolen! Was a property next door to Walmart and I bought the logs. Contractor doing the clearing was trying to burn it all.

We hauled off ~2 loads and left the short stuff, maybe a cord or two. I put a "free wood" sign up.
Place was picked clean by the next day, even the branches!


Also have a guy running around with a log truck stealing whole decks of logs and then selling it.
They impounded the truck and jailed him, but somehow he's back with the truck.

Had the balls to pull in the shop one evening wanting to sell 1/2 a load of saw logs for a crazy price We sent him packing.

 

[Frogge]

Seen a few spiked trees down in the Vancouver region. Lot more things like fences and other structures that just grew in though. Logging cable wrapped around trees is pretty common in areas with mountain bikers.
Fuel theft is more common along with smashing windows and graffiti.

 

[Porosonik]

Back in Northwest California in the 1970's I saw plenty of it. This was pretty much during the height of the "Save The Redwoods" frenzy, and the Friends of the Earth were very active in and around Humboldt county with their "monkeywrenching". Trees and logs were getting spiked regularly, and they were making the most of bragging about it. One of their spiked logs managed to make it past the metal detectors in the Pacific Lumber mill at Scotia-and pretty well messed up the head rig offbearer when the band saw hit it.

Here's a little side note related to the incident. A good friend of mine was logging and portable sawmilling in Garberville in Southern Humboldt (the hippie and marajuna growing capitol of the world at that time) , and was staying in a rundown old motel while away from home during the week. As fate would have it, the guy in the next room was the head of the local Friends of the Earth chapter who he knew quite well, having once rented a house to him. Anyway, my friend would come in after a day's work, tired, dirty, well- you know what it's like after a day of logging and milling, and would set on the bench outside of his room and have a beer and relax before making dinner. The neighbor would come out and preach tree-hugging and tree-saving, and generally do his best to start an arguement. My friend would try not to humor him- which ticked the guy off. He finally told my friend: "did you hear about the offbearer at PL a few weeks ago when the spiked log went through the saw? We did that". My friend told him: "you know.. for every spiked log that turns up, we're going to drive copper spikes into ten trees". The guy answers: "so? What will that accomplish". My friend explained that the copper would kill the tree without harming the merchantability of the wood, and is soft enough to not hurt the saw". Supprisingly enough, the tree spiking dwindled off to almost nothing for a long time after that.

The late 70s were interesting times in Northern California. Most of the logging companies were working themselves out of existance by then- having their "sustained-yield" programs disrupted by loosing property to the new national park, and the rising cost of fuel was making it difficult to get lumber to market. About this time, a mysterious fire occured in the Island Mountain railroad tunnel North of Latonville, which shut down the only rail line for good, leaving 100+ miles of mostly two lane, tourist clogged highway as the only way to move stuff out. That was pretty much the end of large scale timber operations.

One more side note- In the filer's room at the sawmill I worked at for a while there was a Model T Ford connecting rod hanging on the wall. They found it with the headrig saw about a foot into a second growth redwood log- hanging from a nail. Second growth redwood can grow *a lot* in fifty years or so....

Porosonik.

 

[1270d]

We had three machines tampered with last year. Sugar was introduced into the hydraulic system and fuel. Ended up costing over 100k to fix and never found a culprit. Whoever it was had some equipment saavy