Rustlers Steal Branches Off Maine Trees

Landowners in eastern Maine are angered by the illegal stripping of branches from trees by brush rustlers who sell their booty to wreath makers.

“Some people will do anything for a buck,” said Leslie Thornton, assistant regional ranger for Maine’s Forest Service. “As the price of brush has gone up, more people are doing this.”

Along U.S. 1 in Jonesboro, bright yellow signs warn “tippers”--those who gather branch tips from balsam trees--to stay off property unless they have permission.

Roadblocks along secondary roads have been set up to check the tippers’ harvests, and details patrol back roads to discourage illegal tipping.

What was once a way for kids to earn a few bucks is now a big business.

Douglas Getchell, 39, a Forest Service ranger in Whitneyville, gathered tips in burlap bags and sold them for 3 or 4 cents a pound when he was a child. Now, the going rate for tips is about 20 or 30 cents a pound, and a good tipper can earn more than $200 a day.

About 2 million wreaths a year are produced in eastern Maine, making the area the wreath capital of the nation and pumping an estimated $15 million to $18 million into the local economy.

Most of the land in the region is owned by Champion and Georgia-Pacific Corp., each of which owns about 450,000 acres. For a $40 fee, Georgia-Pacific lets anyone take branch tips from its land. Champion, meanwhile, divides its land in large blocks of 300 to 3,000 acres and auctions rights to tippers. Bids range from $300 to $1,000.

Rangers say illegal tippers usually have permits from paper companies or written permission from private landowners to gather tips, but often move onto other land where brush is more plentiful.

The vast forests and zigzagging property lines across hundreds of thousands of acres make enforcement difficult. Six rangers patrol the 1.5 million-acre district in Washington County.

Tippers often carry a gun to make it appear that they are hunting.

“Sometimes I’ll catch them with stacks of tips nearby and they’ll say: ‘It’s not mine. I’m out here hunting,’ ” Getchell said.

Greg Antil of Jonesboro and some friends last year pooled $1,000 to buy the tipping rights on a prime block of Champion-owned land only to have brush rustlers tip a portion of the full-bodied trees.

He said tipping on land where rights have been purchased by others is like stealing their money.