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115 Law Libr. J. 208 (2023)
Tree Thieves: Crime and Survival in North America's Woods

handle is hein.journals/llj115 and id is 209 raw text is: LAW LIBRARY JOURNAL data alone make the title an interesting read and a worthwhile addition to an academic law library's collection. Bourgon, Lyndsie. Tree Thieves: Crime and Survival in North America's Woods. New York: Little, Brown Spark, 2022. 289p. $28.00. Reviewed by Colleen M. Skinner* ¶6 If you love the environment, redwoods, trees in general, and true crime, you will love Tree Thieves. Within a few pages the author paints a somber picture of timber poaching, a crime with an annual worldwide cost of $1 billion. The U.S. Forest Service estimates that $100 million is taken from U.S. government forests each year, and that 1 in 10 trees cut from government land is cut illegally. As these numbers sink in, questions deepen: Why is this happening? Why is it a problem? What can be done to stop it? ¶7 The reasons for timber poaching begin in England in the Middle Ages. Initially, forest referred to land appropriated by William the Conqueror. Bourgon explains the word's root for is similar to forbidden and the Latin word foris means outside. And forbidden the forest was to anyone other than nobility or those the elite deemed worthy of hunting in the forests or chopping down the trees. In the thirteenth century, the Charter of the Forest attempted to change those rules to allow commoners the right to enter the forest to hunt and to gather wood for cooking and heating their homes. The Charter of the Forest was an early environmental law that included animal rights and forced wealthy landowners to return forest land to the people. In this time, trees were recognized as boundary markers, sanctuaries, and vital to everyday life. ¶8 Fast-forward to modern day: trees remain sanctuaries vital to everyday life, and environmental laws continue to shape access to this vital resource. Bourgon posits that environmental laws shut down the West Coast timber industry by preventing timber companies from cutting on government land and even from collecting deadwood on the forest floor and on the beaches, setting off a bleak chain of events. The former loggers needed money to live, so they stole wood. They became depressed about stealing and the loss of their family tradition and personal identity as generational loggers. Many turned to drugs, and to feed the drug habit they stole more wood. This generation of loggers remembers their fathers and grandfathers making a living from the forest, and they resent the government telling them they can no longer carry on their family tradi- tion. They are angry at the government's intrusion, and in turn they poach trees in the night, taking what they believe to be rightfully theirs on the land their families have worked for generations. Tree Thieves looks at the more personal reasons for this crime and examines how unemployment pushed former loggers to drugs and theft. As one indication of how intertwined illegal logging and drugs are, one Forest Service investiga- tor states that drug addiction underlies 90 percent of cedar and maple wood theft cases. ¶9 Widening its scope, Tree Thieves also discusses the timber theft problem in Brazil, Indonesia, Madagascar, Peru, and Taiwan, noting that the World Bank and © Colleen M. Skinner, 2023. Law Library Director and Assistant Professor, Jacksonville University College of Law Library and Resource Center, Jacksonville University, Jacksonville, Florida. Vol. 115:1 [2023-51 208

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