Long Read! These Detectives Use Tree DNA To Catch Timber Thieves

In this week's Long Read with Outside Magazine Features Editor Fred Drier, we explore an entirely different kind of poaching than the one you're thinking of. This isn't a story about illegally hunted grizzly bears or gray wolves, it's about trees.

In the Pacific Northwest, loggers venture deep into national forests to illegally cut down protected species of trees that they can then sell as specialty lumber for thousands of dollars.

Today's story was reported by Nick Davidson, about a high profile case of timber poaching that occurred in Washington's Olympic National Forest in 2018 and how a team of forest service rangers and investigators ended up cracking the case by using tree DNA.