Branden Pero at a crime scene in Redwood National and State Park.
Photographer: Balazs Gardi for Bloomberg BusinessweekHunting the Redwood Poachers
Rangers like Branden Pero use hidden cameras to capture thieves who plunder exotic trees and plants from national forests.
Deep into a California forest, up a steep hill and surrounded by ferns and branches, Ranger Branden Pero came across the victim, brutally attacked by ax and chainsaw. The clue that led him to this remote patch of the Redwood National and State Parks was a pile of rocks. The onetime stone barrier, now dismantled, had blocked access to a disused logging road. As Pero walked down the unpaved track to investigate in January last year, he came across the barest outline of a fresh path. It led directly to the crime scene.
The victim was a tree. Specifically, it was a burl—a rounded protrusion from an ancient redwood that bulged out from the lower portion of the trunk. Burls contribute to a forest’s complex ecosystem of growth and regeneration. In the eyes of collectors, their rich and intricate grains make them prized pieces that can be crafted into tables, bowls, and other objects. Taking any plant from a national park is a violation of multiple U.S. laws; taking and selling old-growth redwood, which takes hundreds of years to develop, strikes Pero as particularly egregious.