Foresters, industry urge clearer timber-theft registry and stronger enforcement

Ed Larson, a consulting forester and longtime representative of the Vermont Forest Products Association, and Gwen Zakoff, the association’s lobbyist, told the House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency & Forestry that the attorney general’s report on timber trespass clarified the problem but offered few concrete next steps.

"The landowner deserves to be made whole. The law is there," Larson said, describing situations where landowners win civil judgments but struggle to recover money or get cleanups done. Zakoff said the report contains "breadcrumbs" but lacks actionable recommendations and highlighted the newly created registry as useful but not user-friendly.

The witnesses urged three near-term fixes: make the attorney general’s land‑improvement/timber‑theft registry easier for landowners to read (add plain‑language column headings and a dedicated timber‑theft column), create limited enforcement capacity with a designated specialist inside a state agency or a defined law‑enforcement partner, and…