No, a Discover Pass doesn't permit chopping down big trees
GRANITE FALLS — Timber poachers were caught cutting 18 trees on state forest land off the Mountain Loop Highway, according to new felony charges against an Everett man.
The defendant, 30, is accused of trying to steal $12,000 worth of live Douglas fir and Western hemlock earlier this year east of Granite Falls.
Another man, 40, hasn’t been charged. His excuse? He thought his Discover Pass let him chop down firewood, he reportedly told a state Department of National Resources officer. The pass doesn’t give people the right to break into gated forests and cut down living trees, the officer told him. But he asked to see the man’s pass anyway.
The man didn’t actually have a Discover Pass.
The investigation began last December, when DNR officer Greg Erwin noticed someone had been sneaking onto the land about 8 miles east of Granite Falls. Signs at the gate warn no motorized vehicles are allowed. A wildlife camera was set up to watch the road.
At 9 on a Thursday morning in January, the officer found the gate unlocked. Just over a mile up the road, he spotted a Nissan Pathfinder, hauling a utility trailer full of freshly chopped wood.
Two men with Stihl chain saws were “actively cutting wood as I drove in,” the officer wrote. Erwin asked what they were doing. The men said they arrived at 5 a.m. to collect firewood. One man, 40, asked if they were on state forest land. The officer explained no permits to cut wood had been issued in the region, and they needed to unload the rounds from the trailer. Stumps of felled trees had been covered up with moss.
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