Bark Bandits Stripping Oregon's Cascara Trees

ASTORIA, Ore. - Lumber barons look at Oregon's rolling carpets of forest and see future fortunes in plywood and pulp. But under the lush canopy lies a woody treasure of a different kind - and it's increasingly becoming the target of plundering poachers.

While moss, shrubbery, tree bark and other forest undergrowth have long been legally harvested for use in floral arrangements and herbal remedies, decreasing prices, expensive licensing and dwindling stocks of the plants are forcing some collectors to cross the line.

Clatsop County Sheriff's Deputy Don Swanson stomped through dew-covered ferns and slid his hand down the smooth, naked trunk of a cascara tree - one of 20 in the grove stripped of its bark stem to twig.

"The tree will die," he said, shaking his head. "When you mention poaching, they consider animal poaching, but forest product poaching is just as big a problem. When I first started, I was like, `Is there a market for this stuff?' And sure enough, it's a very lucrative market."

In the case of cascara, the bark can be ground into a powder prized as an all-natural laxative and an ingredient in over-the-counter medicines.

Just this summer, Swanson cracked a ring of 11 people who are accused of ransacking the area and loading more than 1,000 pounds of the peeled bark into a truck bound for a processing plant in Montesano, Wash.

Last month, the group was indicted on theft charges for another incident in which they allegedly stole about two tons of bark worth $1,300 off state land.

Wholesale houses dealing legally in such specialty forest products as cascara bark, moss, ferns and salal leaves can be big businesses, grossing more than $66,000 a week at the height of the picking seasons, said Dennis Heryford, chief investigator with the Washington State Department of Natural Resources.

While the buyers are required to check collectors to make sure they are licensed to pick the plants, many fall through the cracks. Swanson estimates that in his little corner of northwest Oregon, he deals with about 100 cases of forest poaching a year.

In the case of cascara bark, the poachers jam a screwdriver under the bark, girdle the tree and then slice the bark up the length of the trunk to a height of 8 or 10 feet. Other bandits pluck up holly, ferns, moss and salal leaves.

Forty years ago, huge processing centers dotted the coast, drawing upon the lush undergrowth of the Northwest's temperate rainforests and shipping the plants off to florists and pharmacists as far away as New York, Los Angeles and even Holland.

But clearcut logging has chopped down the protective canopy that shaded the delicate undergrowth and expensive licenses have made it difficult for individual collectors to squeak by as prices for the plants continue to stagnate.

In Oregon, collectors pay a $250 fee for just three months of moss collecting on state lands alone, said David Baird, who operates Oregon Coast Evergreen in the small town of Tillamook. The fee system is made more complex by the fact that state, federal and county authorities each set different fees for each forest product - bark, ferns, moss, leaves.

On federal Bureau of Land Management forests, for example, the fees range from $11 to hundreds of dollars for a two-week season.

In the case of moss, the problem for Baird is that the highest he can pay pickers is 90 cents per pound. At that rate, moss collectors have to bring in about 270 pounds of moss - which they painstakingly rake off tree branches - just to break even.

That is, of course, if they adhere to the permit system.

But even paying the fees doesn't keep some collectors from crossing the line, said Ron Exeter, a botanist with the BLM in Salem.

"A lot of people use our permits and harvest on someone else's land," he said. "Once you get the product and are driving down the road, who knows where you've got it from."

Exeter said the BLM sells about 400 permits a year - prorated by how much undergrowth each collector hauls in - but he estimates about half of the permit holders take more than they're entitled to or plunder forests that are off-limits.

Baird blames government regulation for the decline in legal pickers. He's seen his picking force drop from 300 five years ago to just 10 steady pickers today.

"The permits are totally out of line with what we're doing," he said. "They should encourage them to pick and at least have a chance to make it and not drive them out of business. It's now come down to a money thing."