LUBEC, Maine — It may not get the attention that conventional types of theft get, but this is the time of year when the state’s forest rangers are out in the woods making sure no one is stealing branches off of trees.
Last week, those efforts netted six people suspected of illegally harvesting evergreen boughs in North Lubec, according to state officials. Game wardens who were checking on deer hunters on the peninsula, which juts into Cobscook Bay, came across the harvesters on Nov. 13.
Cutting evergreen boughs, also called “tipping,” is a common activity in rural Maine in the fall when wreath makers gear up for their seasonal production of wreaths, centerpieces and garlands. Tippers are required to have written permission from landowners with them when they are out harvesting.
Warden Joe McBrine said Thursday that he and fellow Warden Wayde Carter were near the northern tip of Seward Neck around noon Nov. 13 when they came across a Buick station wagon by the side of the road, parked next to a wood lot. Inside the back of the vehicle they saw balsam needles and twigs strewn about — a sign that someone was harvesting branches nearby.
He said he and Carter walked into the woods and, after questioning people they found cutting branches, eventually detained six people who were harvesting without permission, including Leanne Lacombe, who McBrine said tried unsuccessfully to sneak away from responding law enforcement officers.
Lacombe, 30, of Castle Hill and Willie Nelson York, 34 of Lubec, each was charged with cutting evergreens without landowner permission, a Class E crime punishable by six months in jail and a $500 fine, according to Jeff Currier, regional forest ranger for Maine Forest Service. He said Friday that the four other people, all of whom are juveniles, were issued warnings.
McBrine said Lacombe and York each had outstanding arrest warrants for probation violations out of Aroostook County and were placed under arrest. Currier said he was not sure of the exact quantity of boughs they allegedly cut but that it is believed to be around several hundred pounds, which is a typical amount.
“It was a truckload,” Currier said.
Currier said some landowners impose overall weight harvest limits, but others allow unlimited harvesting as it does not affect the long-term health of the targeted trees.
State forest rangers who responded to the Lubec scene confiscated the boughs but the limbs did not go to waste, he added.
When illegally harvested boughs are seized, rangers take them to a local wreath maker who weighs the limbs and then writes a receipt for the amount they are worth, Currier said. The going rate wreath makers pay for evergreen boughs, he added, is generally between 25 cents and 45 cents per pound.
The wreath maker then uses the boughs to make wreaths or garlands and the ranger holds on to the receipt while the case moves through the court system, Currier said. If the case results in a conviction, the ranger gives the receipt to the landowner where the boughs were cut, who then can take it to the wreath maker to be reimbursed for the value of the harvest.
Currier said bough harvesters typically start work in October and work each fall through Thanksgiving. It is important to the state’s rural economy, employing people in western, northern and eastern Maine.
Currier said the vast majority of tippers are law-abiding people who follow the rules. When tipping is done illegally, it involves “a few knuckleheads,” he said, who sometimes commit other violations such as cutting trees down, littering, or damaging the terrain.
“It’s a big business in Down East Maine, for making wreaths and centerpieces,” he said of those who do it legally. “Our main mission is landowner protection. We’re out patrolling the forests. We get dozens and dozens of cases each year.”
