TACOMA — A 50-year-old Quilcene man has been convicted of charges he hired young men to poach high-quality maple trees from Olympic National Park.
A federal jury in Tacoma on Thursday convicted Mark Randall of conspiracy, damaging government property and possessing stolen government property.
Prosecutors say Randall is an experienced logger involved in harvesting maple to make violins and guitars. He met the young men at a party and told them he’d pay them for maple and showed them how to harvest it properly — even traveling to the national forest and marking one maple with chalk to show them where to cut it.
At issue in the trial were two trees cut from the Penny Creek area of the Hood Canal Ranger District.
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