3A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2017
‘They were doing it to kill’
Poachers went
after elk, bears
and bobcats
attack the bear after it fell to
the ground.
Broad daylight
By ANDREW THEEN
The Oregonian
EO Media Group
The Oregon Department of Forestry estimates that the
fire season has so far cost it $38.9 million.
Forestry Department
wants more money
to fi ght wildfi res
By CLAIRE
WITHYCOMBE
Capital Bureau
Pioneer
Presbyterian
Church
( Next to Camp Rilea)
Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife
Dogs attack a bear in Washington state.
‘If this is more widespread
than it is now,then I just
don’t have enough people,
and that’s really frustrating.’
Capt. Jeff Wickersham
Washington wildlife enforcement office
viduals charged thus far face
191 criminal counts, including
33 felony charges, The Seattle
Times reported Thursday.
Illegal killings
The illegal killings are frus-
trating for the general public
and for the vast majority of
hunters, who follow the rules
and pay for tags to hunt game
in specifi c seasons. In Ore-
gon, hunters even pool money
to help pay for tips that lead to
poaching arrests.
Haynes,
Martin
and
30-year-old Joseph Dills were
featured prominently in the
hundreds of pages of inves-
tigative reports obtained by
The Oregonian . None could
be immediately reached for
comment.
Oregon
State
Police
declined comment last month
and did not immediately
respond to a request for com-
ment on Thursday.
Investigators obtained a
treasure trove of evidence
thanks to the men’s cell phones
and the GPS tracking embed-
ded in their smartphones. On
those devices, troopers discov-
ered hundreds of images, texts
and videos.
The photos and videos
included geotagged locations,
allowing investigators to hone
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fundraisers over the summer.
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are the reasons our bus is
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in on specifi c sites and discover
more evidence, including car-
casses and bullet casings.
In March, offi cials seized
84 packages of various game
meats from Haynes’ freezer
in the Longview area and an
entire bobcat carcass.
Wickersham said the group
killed at least 20 black bears in
Washington alone, frequently
leaving the animals to rot in
the woods. Troopers used their
phones’ geolocation services
to locate bear carcasses in the
woods.
The poachers used Dills’s
dogs in several instances to
tree bears, according to the
investigation. Treeing bears or
cougars is illegal in both states.
The case fi les include vid-
eos showing the men shoot-
ing a bear out of a tree with
dogs barking all around. The
men then order the dogs to
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SILVERTON — Ore-
gon’s forestry department
may ask legislators in the
upcoming session for more
money to deal with escalat-
ing wildfi res.
State Forester Peter
Daugherty told the Board
of Forestry Wednesday that
there is “big interest” in the
Legislature in addressing fi re
policy, particularly when it
comes to fi res on Oregon’s
federal land.
“They all want to do
something, and I don’t know
quite what it is they want to
do,” Daugherty said. “But
they have created a fi re cau-
cus, and there will be a fi re
policy discussion at their
next legislative session.”
The timing may be right
for the forestry department
to make its case to legisla-
tors. While Oregon’s rural
communities
consistently
see fi re’s effects up close, the
state’s major cities got a dose
of smoke and ash from wild-
fi res this summer.
The Eagle Creek Fire,
which began in early Sep-
tember and is still burn-
ing on the scenic Columbia
River Gorge east of Port-
land, caused particular dis-
tress. And this week, more
than 20 people have died as a
result of wildfi res in Califor-
nia wine country.
Gov. Kate Brown was
also “very engaged” in fi re
issues, Daugherty said.
Brown has convened a
council to hasten the eco-
nomic recovery from wild-
fi res that scorched com-
munities from Mosier to
Brookings.
Fire protection makes up
a good share of the agency’s
costs.
The Oregon Department
of Forestry estimates that the
fi re season has cost it $38.9
million so far.
Recent fi re seasons have
also put a strain on employ-
ees — a problem that was
documented by state auditors
last year.
When fi re season hits, all
divisions of the department
help handle the workload.
“We were in all-hands-on-
deck mode from the (Aug. 21
total solar) eclipse until just
recently,” Daugherty said.
Harsh fi re seasons and
low timber revenues have
plagued the agency’s state
forests division and, as of
April, that division of the
agency was expected to go
into the red in 2022.
Daugherty noted that the
agency could also work to
strengthen relationships with
landowners,
cooperation
with other government agen-
cies and remind the public of
the link between forest man-
agement and fi re.
Board member Cindy
Deacon Williams, of Med-
ford, argued that the wild-
fi re situation may require
more proactive measures
to increase resilience on
forestlands.
“If we don’t fi gure out a
way to engage with it pro ac-
tively ahead of the time, we
will as an agency do noth-
ing but rob Peter to pay fi re,”
said Williams, “With both
funding and people, and
energy, and effort, and tal-
ent, and the way the trends
are going, there’s no way we
can win that battle if that’s all
we do.”
Daugherty expressed con-
cern that this year’s fi re sea-
son could stir up old tensions
about fi re policy and forest
management.
“I think our real challenge
will be to redirect these divi-
sive conversations to a more
productive
conversation,
where we can actually make
progress by fi nding common
ground,” Daugherty said.
The Capital Bureau is a
collaboration between EO
Media Group and Pamplin
Media Group.
In the early morning hours
of Nov. 30, a trail camera hid-
den along a forest service road
south of The Dalles snapped
some routine images that
would spark a two-state inves-
tigation that was anything but
ordinary.
The pictures showed two
men exit a Toyota pickup armed
with rifl es, a spotlight and head-
lamps. Deer season was over,
but Oregon State Police troop-
ers discovered a headless deer
carcass in the area.
A few days later, troop-
ers spotted the same truck in
The Dalles and pulled over the
two men. William J. Haynes,
24, and Erik C. Martin, 23,
would later confess to killing
two bucks, a silver gray squir-
rel and to decapitating the deer
and taking their heads back to
Longview, Washington, docu-
ments show.
But that was just the
beginning.
The trail camera eventu-
ally unraveled what Washing-
ton Department of Fish and
Wildlife offi cials say is prob-
ably the largest poaching ring
in that state’s history, leading
to the arrests of Haynes, Mar-
tin and six others. The Oregon
investigation is ongoing and
it’s unclear whether all eight
will face charges here, but offi -
cials in Washington estimate
the case involves the illegal
killing of more than 100 elk,
deer, black bears, bobcats and
other animals over a nearly
two-year span.
The animals were not so
much hunted as they were exe-
cuted. In many cases, the car-
casses were left to rot rather
than harvested for meat,
according to the investigation.
And while poaching is per-
vasive in both states — Ore-
gon averages about 750 vio-
lations a year — Capt. Jeff
Wickersham of Washington’s
wildlife enforcement offi ce
said he’s never seen a more
egregious case.
“They were doing it to
kill,” Wickersham said during
an interview last month. “They
were just killers. There’s no
redeeming quality to it.”
Cases against several of the
accused poachers are moving
forward in Skamania County
court this fall. The eight indi-
Some of the hunts occurred
at night, but many of the inci-
dents happened in broad
daylight.
Wickersham said that fact
alone is troubling. “We never
received any phone calls,” he
said of the illegal activity.
He urged hunters or out-
door enthusiasts to call in any
suspicious activity and not
assume what they see is legal.
Wickersham says Wash-
ington has just 130 enforce-
ment offi cers assigned to
patrol the entire state. “If this
is more widespread than it
is now,” he said of the ille-
gal killing, “Then I just don’t
have enough people, and that’s
really frustrating.”
Oregon has even fewer —
just 120 troopers dedicated to
game enforcement.
Haynes, Martin and Dills
texted each other frequently
with photos of various animals
the three had killed.
Two weeks before the two
were captured on a trail cam-
era in Oregon, documents
show that Haynes texted Mar-
tin, asking, “You ready to kill
(expletive) tonight?”
Martin resounded, “Hell
yeah, n****,” according to
the investigation. Several of
the accused, who are largely
young white men from s outh-
west Washington, routinely
used the racial slur in texts to
one another.
Wickersham said the inves-
tigation is continuing. He said
some of the accused were
involved in a 2008 poaching
crew known as the “Kill ‘Em
all Boyz.” According to pub-
lic records, Dills pled guilty
in 2008 and faced more than
$2,000 in fi nes related to that
incident.
Wickersham said he sees
the killings as nothing more
than bragging rights fi rst and
foremost. “It’s friendship in
the worst way so to speak,” he
said of the group, “A very ter-
rible way of showing camara-
derie with one another.”
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