Ed note: I never imagined that each tree has its very own unique DNA. This science helped to prosecute tree poachers in our own beautiful Olympic forrests.
By Vimal Patel Nov. 10, 2021 in the New York Times
In the spring and summer of 2018, a crew of poachers had been chopping down trees by night in the Olympic National Forest in Washington State, federal prosecutors said.
On Aug. 3, they came upon the wasp’s nest.
It was at the base of a bigleaf maple, a species of hardwood tree with a shimmering grain that is prized for its use in violins, guitars and other musical instruments. The crew was selling bigleaf maples to a mill in Tumwater, using forged permits, prosecutors said. Logging is banned in the forest, a vast wilderness encompassing nearly a million acres.
The timber poachers sprayed insecticide and most likely gasoline on the nest, and burned it, the authorities said. But they were unable to douse the fire with water bottles, so they fled, prosecutors said.
The fire spread out from the forest’s Elk Lake area, near Hood Canal, burning 3,300 acres and costing about $4.2 million to contain, prosecutors said. It came to be known as the Maple Fire.
On Monday, the leader of the illegal operation, Justin Andrew Wilke, 39, was sentenced to 20 months in federal prison, prosecutors said. In July, a jury had convicted Mr. Wilke of conspiracy, theft of public property and trafficking in illegally harvested timber, among other charges, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Washington.