Spiking of Timber Trees Leads to Offer of Reward
A $10,000 reward has been posted by a southern Oregon timber company hoping to find whoever drove several 8-inch-long metal spikes into trees cut on a disputed timber sale, causing damage to sawmill equipment.
“You’re playing with dynamite in cases like this,” Buck Mehl, general manager of Gregory Forest Products Co. in Glendale, said Friday, eight days after the first of about 20 spikes began turning up in logs at the company’s mill.
No injuries have occurred, but some saw blades were damaged when they struck the spikes, Mehl said. The trees were cut on the Robinson Gulch timber sale, located on Bureau of Land Management property near King Mountain, north of Grants Pass in Josephine County.
Some environmental groups have advocated tree spiking, especially in Western states, to protest the cutting of trees and destruction of forests by timber companies.
“We started running into spikes in our big mill last Thursday,” Mehl said. “It took us until Monday to determine which sale they came from.”
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