On episode 116 of the Green Root Podcast (the official podcast of Eco-Integrity Alliance), Jeff Ruch, Senior Counsel for Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, exposes decades of evidence pointing towards collusion between the U.S. Forest Service and the logging industry in stealing—yes, stealing—trees from public lands.
Host Josh Schlossberg talks with Jeff about:
- Government estimates of $10 million to $100 million in annual timber theft from public lands;
- U.S. Forest Service’s formation of the Timber Theft Task Force in 1991;
- Forest Service’s disbanding of the Task Force once its own agency staff were implicated as “co-conspirators” in helping Weyerhaeuser get away with stealing millions of dollars of logs from National Forests;
- How the Forest Service’s expanding “wildfire” logging schemes make timber theft even more difficult to uncover;
- Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility’s current work with agency whistleblowers to hold the Bureau of Land Management accountable for overgrazing public lands.