Editor's note: This updates to explain that the men were logging on lands outside the park and encroached into it, clarifies that length of the investigation was due to legal negotiations.
Two men who accidentally logged some 400 trees from across 31 acres of Ozark National Scenic Riverways in Missouri have paid restitution of more than $52,000 to the federal government, which declined to seek criminal charges as the men exhibited no criminal intent.
The total bill paid by the men was $52,469, according to a release from the National Park Service's Investigative Services Branch. The amount was reached in a pretrial diversion agreement between the men and the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Eastern District of Missouri, and equals the cost of site remediation and the sale price of the erroneously-harvested timber, the release said.
NPS Special Agent Les Seago said Monday morning that the men had been logging on lands outside of the park for about a year, and during their operations they didn't realize they were taking trees from within the park boundaries.
"They were cutting on private property," he said. "They had purchased the rights for timber on this private land that butts up against National Park Service lands, and they encroached into the national park."
While the press release announcing the settlement described a "complex 14-month investigation," Special Agent Seago said most of that time was spent on legal negotiations between the U.S. attorney's office and the lawyers for the two.
An ISB special agent and rangers from the park opened an investigation in March 2013, when a ranger on routine patrol found a logging operation harvesting timber in the area of the Susie Nichols Cabin, inside the park's boundaries, the release said.
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Comments
And this is how it should work. Great that both parties could come to an equitable agreement that helps restore the land as well not send these well intentioned men to prison.
Yet in Great Smoky Mtns NP a higbrow resort clear cuts a thousand trees, blazes their own trail system WITHIN park boundaries and is rewarded with a guiding concession in the park after the park had asked them to quit doing so. Money talks in the NPS. How much did this private resort pay in form of restitution? ZERO. Who went to jail? No one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFIPDYW1ba0
"Money talks in the NPS"
Congress would probably be more accurate.
I'll bet a hamburger that pressure came down from somewhere above the NPS.
You are close to being spot on, Lee. However, move up one level to the Senate. And this proves it.
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1996-02-19/news/9602190118_1_blackber...