PHOTO BY JOHN FRYMAN / THE VILLAGE REPORTER
TREE THEFT … Opdycke Park offers plenty of beautiful trees, but in the last couple of years, three large walnut trees have been illegally stolen, cut and removed from the park.
By: John Fryman
THE VILLAGE REPORTER
john@thevillagereporter.com
For the third time in the last two years, a tree thief struck again at Opdycke Park, and it has baffled the Williams County Park Board on who had done this in a county owned park.
Williams County Engineer Todd Roth who is also the chairman of the County Park Board said there were two trees already cut down earlier this year.
“What they’re doing is dropping the tree, cutting the top off and then typically cutting the trunk like in half so they can get out of there,” commented Roth.
Now there is a third tree in which Roth didn’t know the exact date because it’s an area the county doesn’t frequent or visit very often.
It is believed the walnut tree, a three-foot wide, 30-foot-tall in size, was taken either in August or September of this year. Roth added it’s a pretty good-sized tree with straight trunks.
“We weren’t going to log them because they were healthy trees and it’s part of the attraction of Opdycke Park,” said Roth. He was told the price value of the stolen trees is between $10,000 and $12,000 per tree.
“They’re taking them (trees) somewhere to get logged or milled for lumber,” pointed out Roth. Roth said that park board member Rod Miller rides his horse in Opdycke Park quite often.
“He (Miller) was riding his horse and had noticed one tree during the summer was down and we didn’t cut it,” said Roth. “In the process he (Miller) looked closer and saw the second one. The same thing he was riding in an area he typically rides in.
“What he saw was the stump with sawdust and then the top laying 30 feet away. That’s how we knew it was a thirty-foot trunk knowing that it wasn’t us.”
Miller was doing work on a trail in Opdycke Park when a neighbor had texted him, and it said September 7 is when they knew the tree was down.
“I had called the sheriff’s office, and the deputy is still chasing the person who had stolen the tree,” said Miller. They (Sheriff) may have a couple of suspects in mind from past practice of people stealing stuff. The biggest thing is just get it stopped.”
Miller added that there will be signs being made up and then placed on trees saying, ‘the tree is protected by spikes’, with a big spike on it.
He also commented that the tree has a value along with the two other trees that had been stolen that exceeded the park board’s annual budget of $22,000 per year. The total value of the stolen trees amounted to $30,000.
“The only way you can stop this is to go out there and take the long trees that are there yet and drive steel spikes in them, so the loggers don’t have any interest,” said Miller.
The most recent stolen tree incident occurred in an isolated area where they had dragged the logs either with a flatbed truck or with a cable pulling them up onto the flatbed.
“He (Miller) had seen where they had driven through a cornfield to get there,” noted Roth. “The corn was probably high enough they weren’t noticed.”
If there were any security measures taken to protect the trees in Opdycke Park, it wouldn’t do any good because the person drove the full length of the cornfield about three-eighths of a mile.
“After contacting the sheriff’s department, we kind of kept it quiet because they couldn’t get out a log,” admitted Roth.
“We were hoping they would come back, but now we just need people to know this is going on. So, more eyes on the situation.”
There is no surveillance cameras located in Opdycke Park, but Roth added that even the county had set up cameras in different areas, he didn’t think they would have a camera for the latest incident because it was located way back in a corner of the park.
Roth hopes in the future the county can set up more trail cameras but admitted it’s going to be a ‘hit or miss’ situation.
“Now the county sheriff is involved, and the public is more aware of it,” said Roth. Hopefully something will come forward with somebody with information or maybe a sawmill can match it. We just don’t want it to continue that’s the main thing.”