BOISE – Two Idaho men pleaded guilty last week to theft of timber from the Malheur National Forest in 2013.

Terry Kevin Burton, 46, of Wilder and his son Brent L. Burton, 22, of Homedale entered their pleas April 30 in U.S. District Court in Boise.

The Burtons admitted they made trips to Oregon and into the Malheur to unlawfully cut lodgepole pine posts and poles for commercial sale, without a commercial timber license or contract. They also created an illegal trail through the forest to get to the timber, resulting in damage to the area.

They agreed to pay $3,880 in restitution. Sentencing is set for July 9 before Chief U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill at the federal courthouse in Boise.

Theft of government property can bring a sentence of up to a year in prison, a maximum fine of $5,000 and up to a year of supervised release.

The Burtons were indicted by a federal grand jury Oct. 9, 2013.

The plea agreement would resolve multiple counts faced by the men, including conspiracy to commit theft of government property, injury to government property, and additional counts of theft of government property.

According to documents filed in federal court:

The investigation began March 11, 2013, when Forest Service Law Enforcement Officer (LEO) Aaron Henrichs was working on the Malheur Forest and noticed a truck and trailer parked off Highway 26. Henrichs saw the Burtons come out of the forest on a snowcat and ATV, hauling firewood and lodgepole pine posts and poles – wood that was not allowed for cutting at that time of year on the Malheur.

Contacted by Henrich, the Burtons showed a personal-use firewood permit from the Malheur, and said they were cutting some of the wood for firewood but planned to use longer lodgepole poles for personal use, to build a fence at their house.

“However, they had failed to tag the wood after they left the cutting site, as required; they had cut larch, a species of firewood which was not supposed to be cut at that time of the year; and, their permit did not authorize them to use any mechanical equipment, such as the snowcat, to bring the firewood out of the forest,” the filing recounted.

Henrichs showed the Burtons the conditions listed on the back of their firewood permit and explained they were in violation, but he did not cite them then.

On May 19, 2013, Henrichs was patrolling about six miles from that site and found an illegal trail off Forest Road 2645 on the 155 spur. Henrichs found the trail was about 12 feet wide, with ruts, exposed soil and eroding areas. Saplings had been run over and trampled by an ATV making repeated trips on the road, and recently cut lodgepole – in commercial lengths, 8 to 12 feet long – was found stacked along the trail.

The filing says Henrichs installed a motion-sensing camera near the end of the trail to try to find out who was using the illegal trail system.

Later he found a modified Ford pickup truck, which turned out to be registered to Terry Burton, parked on the road not far from the trail. The truck, originally owned by a railroad for service work, had a hydraulic system and a crane on it, and had a long trailer hooked up to it.

Henrichs and another officer drove to Vale, and saw the truck go by toward Idaho about 12:30 a.m. the next day. They drove to the Burton home and observed the truck parked, its trailer full of pine post and poles.

When they returned later, the truck was gone, but Burton’s fiancee said he had gone to a post and pole business in Parma, Idaho. A worker at the business said the Burtons had delivered a load that morning, and also had dropped off a load over the weekend while the business was closed.

Photos from the motion camera showed the two making six round-trips on the illegal trail on the ATV pulling a trailer, bringing out loads of posts and poles.

A Forest Service timber specialist was brought in to record the trail damage and also counted 425 stumps where a standing tree had been taken. She estimated repairing the damage to the area would cost $3,180.

Officials executed a search warrant at the Burton home and found evidence of other loads of wood taken from the Malheur Forest earlier in May, also sold to the Parma business.