A single log from a black walnut tree, cut on federal property and sold to a timber buyer, brought $1,359 for William Riley Stump — and four months in prison.
Stump received the sentence Friday after pleading guilty earlier to removing timber from a Giles County portion of the Bluestone Project, a flood control reservoir owned by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Black walnuts are among the largest and longest-living hardwoods in the country, and are prized for their use in the making of fine furniture.
But it is illegal to cut them in the Bluestone Project, a 21,000-acre property in Virginia and West Virginia where the trees play a vital ecological role and prevent flooding by stabilizing riverbanks along a stretch of the New River.
“Many individuals tempted to make a quick dollar from timber theft probably do not even realize the significant environmental harms of their conduct,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Baudinet wrote in a sentencing memorandum filed in Roanoke’s federal court.
People are also reading…
Baudinet asked U.S. District Judge Elizabeth Dillon to impose a five-month sentence on the misdemeanor charge, in part to deter others who might seek to profit from the valuable trees.
Dillon opted for a four-month sentence that was requested by Stump’s attorney.
“While removing trees was not ideal, it was an opportunity to make money that did not involve hurting others or himself,” Donald Pender, an assistant federal public defender, wrote in court papers. “His only crime is that he removed the trees from federal property.”
Stump is one of three men charged last year with the illegal harvesting of black walnut trees.
A second defendant, Derrick Thompson, was convicted in November of conspiracy. But a jury acquitted him of three additional charges of aiding and abetting in the crime. Evidence showed that about 60 trees were cut on the federally protected land, where the New River can serve as a reservoir of sorts when there is high water from an upstream dam that forms a lake near Hinton, West Virginia.
Stump sold one of the logs for $1,359 to a timber dealer in Lindside, West Virginia. There was no indication that the man who purchased the log knew that it was illegally taken.
As part of a plea agreement, 22 additional charges against Stump, of Narrows, were dismissed.
Pender wrote in a sentencing memorandum that his client’s actions were motivated by his “economic situation,” but provided no details other than to say the 52-year-old entered the workforce as an eighth-grader and can barely read and write.
Dillon allowed Stump to report to prison when notified, and directed that he be evaluated for drug treatment following his release.
She also imposed $3,189 in restitution to the government — a sum that Baudinet requested, while saying it will be inadequate to replace the fully grown trees.
“Even if new trees were replanted immediately,” the prosecutor wrote, “it would be decades before Bluestone returns to its previous condition.”