Lacey Act

The Lacey Act is an US Federal act that addresses the issues of illegal killing, selling, trading, and possession of mammals and birds. This act also addresses the issue illegal logging

The Lacey Act describes the penalties of illegal logging. 

These penalties are separated into two main categories:

Knowing

Unknowingly

Unknowingly committing the crime is then separated into two sub categories:

Unknowingly and unaware of the Lacey Act

Unknowingly and aware of the Lacey Act

Knowingly breaking the law (which is the purchase, trade or use of illegally logged timber) means that the company, or individual knew all the regulations, and purposely ignored regulations while logging and using the timber. The consequences for this crime is possible:

Up to 5 years in prison

Criminal felony fine

Forfeiture of goods

The first sub category is that the party committing the crime unknowingly did so, however, they did not take all needed precautions to make sure that the laws wouldn’t be broken in the process. The penalty for this infraction is:

A criminal misdemeanor

Up to 1 year prison sentence

Forfeiture of goods

The second sub category can be defined as whom ever broke the law did so unknowingly and had previously taken all needed precautions before the infraction. The consequence for this situation is:

Forfeiture of goods

OR

Civil Penalty

Now let me ask you a question:

Why would a company use or want to illegally harvest timber?

Would it be worth it?

My Theory:

Yes and no. If a company can prove that they were well versed in the Lacey Act and had taken all the proper precautions needed the worse they would be penalized with would be a forfeiture of goods that were made with the illegally sourced timber. In this economy it is important to be the ‘top seller’ and if getting timber cheaper, so the product would have a higher percent mark-up, why wouldn’t the company think about it?

This is more than just a local Maine issue. Illegal logging is a world wide issue.