PORT ANGELES — Two men convicted of poaching timber from the Olympic National Forest have been ordered to pay the federal government back a total of $23,750 for illegally cutting down about 600 trees and selling them as firewood.
Ross J. Lawrence, 42, of Port Angeles was the organizer of the 2002 thefts, said Clallam County Deputy Prosecutor Tim Davis, and was ordered last Thursday to pay the U.S. Forest Service $23,751 in restitution by Clallam County Superior Court Judge Ken Williams.
Lawrence pleaded guilty to first-degree theft in May 2005.
Ronald Last Sr., 59, of Sequim also pleaded guilty in June 2005 to first degree theft. He was required to pay $3,000.
Davis said that Last assisted investigators.
Both men were sentenced to a month in jail, which was converted to 240 hours of community service.
A timber cruiser evaluated the area on Rainy Creek Road in the Sol Duc Valley area where the men were illegally logging and said 577 Douglas fir, nine alders and eight hemlocks were removed, Davis said.
However, the men had covered stumps with moss to conceal the cuts, according to court documents.
“He wasn’t sure if he got all of them, because they were all covered up,” Davis said.
Court documents say that at the time the trees were cut in 2002, they were valued at about $23,751 if sold as timber.
The men removed about 106 cords of wood, and sold it for $130 a cord.
“That’s a lot of wood,” Davis said.