Man fined for illegal tree harvest

HOULTON – A Wytopitlock man has agreed to pay more than $6,000 in fines and restitution for illegally harvesting 275 trees without the permission of the landowners.

As a result of an investigation conducted by the Maine Forest Service starting in late 1999, Scott Hanington, 41, of Hanington Timberlands in Wytopitlock, agreed last Friday in 2nd District Court in Houlton to pay the penalties.

The harvest, which took place in the late fall of 1999, involved the unlawful cutting of trees on two lots belonging to the town of Bancroft, and a lot owned by Dennis Irish of Lincoln.

The court ordered Hanington to pay a $300 fine. He must also pay $1,794 in restitution to Bancroft, $960 restitution to Irish, and an additional $2,622 in survey costs to the town of Bancroft.

Hanington also must put $540 in escrow to purchase 2,000 black spruce trees to be planted on the lots next spring, under the supervision of the state forest service.

According to a press release issued Thursday, Ranger George Harris of the Maine Forest Service East Branch District in Island Falls first inspected the harvested lots in December 1999.

Harris discovered that trees had been cut beyond rock walls and flagging markers, leading him to suspect that harvest trespassing may have occurred.

As part of his investigation, Harris also determined that Hanington Timberlands did have permission to harvest 25 acres of timber on land belonging to Elmer Witten of Bancroft, which bordered the Bancroft and Irish lots.

Harris returned to the site a few weeks later with global positioning equipment to map out all of the lots in question as well as determine the size of the area harvested by Hanington. After meeting with the adjacent property owners, it became clear that Hanington had harvested the additional trees with the permission of the landowners.