Posted on 05/20/2012 6:20:13 AM PDT by rellimpank
--a tree-hugger gets caught---
Brian Brademeyer is charged with painting over markings to trick Forest Service crews into cutting down trees.
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at rapidcityjournal.com ...
NOT satisfactory. $500 is just "a cost of doing activism" and easily absorbed.
BETTER: "a federal petty offense, was $5,000 and six months in jail." The wingnuts may still look on it as a "cost of activism" but now it is 10x costlier and perhaps would send a signal to others.
EVEN BETTER: Penalize him the same substantial per tree amount the loggers would have been hit, had they gone and cut down the wrong ones (23 of 'em, as per Keloland TV in SD).
Just one from the link below (underlines mine): "Vincent pleaded not guilty on Jan. 25 in U.S. District Court in Reno to charges that she hired a company to cut down three old-growth trees, estimated to be up to 100 years old, on U.S. Forest Service land to improve her view, said Natalie Collins, spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office in Nevada. She faces up to 20 years in prison and a $500,000 fine if convicted. Trial is set for April 29.
The 2008 article: Cutting trees can fall on wrong side of the law
they need to either up the dosage or the voltage or both...
Also Treebeard should have stepped on him for being a d_mned Orc.
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