Environmentalist pleads guilty to illegal tree marking

Black Hills environmentalist Brian Brademeyer has pleaded guilty to a federal charge of illegally marking trees to be cut in a U.S. Forest Service timber sale. Brademeyer agreed prior to a proceeding scheduled for Thursday in federal court to pay a $475 fine, plus a $25 processing fee. The maximum penalty for the charge, a federal petty offense, was $5,000 and six months in jail. Contacted by email Friday, Brademeyer confirmed that he was paying the $500 but did not provide further comment. Travis Lunders, a regional special agent for the U.S. Forest Service who investigated the case, said Friday that Brademeyer’s plea and the imposed fine were “a satisfactory conclusion to the case.” A spokesman for the logging industry in the Black Hills didn’t necessarily agree. Tom Troxel, director of the Black Hills Forest Resource Association in Rapid City, said a logging company would almost certainly face harsher penalties if it were caught illegally marking trees in a timber sale. “Tampering with marked trees in a Forest Service timber sale is a major, major issue,” Troxel said. “It looks like a double standard to me.” The federal charge alleged that Brademeyer illegally marked 23 trees in the Norbeck Wildlife Preserve near his home so they would be cut in a timber project there. Critics said Brademeyer’s actions in marking the trees for cutting near his home were hypocritical, since he had challenged previous Forest Service timber projects elsewhere...more