Man Pleads Guilty to Illegally Harvesting Trees in Mark Twain National Forest

“You ought never to take anything that doesn’t belong to you—if you cannot carry it off,” Mark Twain once wrote. An Arkansas man figured out how to cut down and carry off 27 trees from the Mark Twain National Forest in Missouri, and now he’s facing up to 10 years in prison.

Jamie Edmondson, 46, pleaded guilty to harvesting 27 walnut and white oak trees from the Missouri forest between June 2019 and January 2020 without permission from the U.S. Forest Service. Edmondson is accused of selling the timber—worth an estimated $20,269—to sawmills throughout the area.

The ecological damage to the forest caused by the illegal harvesting is estimated at more than $44,000.

Federal agents used surveillance cameras in areas of the national forest to capture images of the truck Edmondson used when harvesting the timber.

As the value of timber continues to soar, some states are warning of an uptick in illegal logging activities.