A Casper Mountain landowner was thrilled when crews cut down dozens of trees around her property as part of Rocky Mountain Power's wildfire mitigation work.
Until the stacks of logs left behind started disappearing.
Over three days last week, she says people hauled away wood from five properties along KTWO Road, leaving behind bare ground where piles of cut timber had been stacked.
Her security cameras, she says, captured people loading the logs, along with their vehicles, faces and a license plate.
When Katie Snyder-Lijewski heard from a neighbor that the wood was missing Friday afternoon, she got her car and started driving, admittedly a little too fast.
Then she saw a patrol car.
Snyder-Lijewski can laugh about it now. She told Cowboy State Daily, “I was angry. I was pissed off, and I got a speeding ticket because of it.”
The Natrona County Sheriff's Office confirmed Monday it received a report of stolen cut wood on KTWO Road on the afternoon of Oct. 9.
“The incident remains under active investigation,” Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Kiera Hett said.
No arrests have been announced.
Snyder-Lijewski, meanwhile, has spent much of the past four days going through security-camera footage, talking with neighbors and gathering evidence she says shows people repeatedly hauling away wood that belonged to landowners.
The Wood Disappears
Snyder-Lijewski said the wood was left behind after trees were cut as part of Rocky Mountain Power's ongoing work on Casper Mountain.
The utility is in the midst of a multiyear, multimillion-dollar wildfire mitigation project that includes replacing electrical infrastructure, burying some power lines and clearing trees around others.
The tree cutting has been controversial among some Casper Mountain residents, but Snyder-Lijewski wasn't one of them.
Because the trees were close to utility lines, removing them privately would have required specialized help. Having them cut as part of the utility project eliminated that headache while also reducing wildfire concerns around her property.
Once cut, Snyder-Lijewski said, logs were stacked outside the utility easement and left for the property owners.
A photograph taken Oct. 8 shows more than 100 cut log sections visible in several large piles along the wooded stretch of KTWO Road, with additional logs obscured beneath and behind them. A photo Snyder-Lijewski said was taken from nearly the same spot the following day shows the piles gone and the ground largely bare.
Snyder-Lijewski said hers wasn't the only property hit.
“There are five properties that they stole off,” she said.
'Mine Was Taken Also'
On Friday, Casper Mountain property owner Judy Reed sounded an alarm.
“Someone is stealing the landowners' wood that Rocky Mountain had cut down,” Reed wrote. “This happened on Ktwo Rd. They also made a mess of road and private property.”
Reed told Cowboy State Daily on Monday that her property adjoins the KTWO tower property and Snyder-Lijewski's.
“Mine was taken also,” Reed said. “All the wood was on private property.” She estimates it amounted to a couple of cords.
Snyder-Lijewski has three surveillance cameras on her property.
After realizing what happened, she began going through roughly 72 hours of footage.
The footage shows at least two people around a pickup and trailer carrying cut wood.
Snyder-Lijewski said other footage captures faces, vehicles and a license plate. She said she turned the material over to investigators.
She also alleges whoever took the wood damaged driveways and landscaping and drove equipment onto private property.
What Is A Pile Of Logs Worth?
Snyder-Lijewski initially posted online that $50,000 worth of wood had been taken. She now says that is not her estimate of the wood's fair-market value.
She puts the actual value at about $4,500.
The $50,000 figure, she acknowledged, was intended to get people's attention and reflected her estimate of what the episode could ultimately cost those responsible if criminal penalties and other expenses were factored in.
Putting a value on unprocessed timber also isn't straightforward.
As Cowboy State Daily reported Sunday, a standard cord of firewood is 128 cubic feet, and the value changes considerably depending on whether someone is buying raw logs or wood that has already been cut, split and delivered.
Sublette County resident Phil Loftus told Cowboy State Daily he and a friend buy truckloads containing roughly 16 to 20 cords of logs for about $150 per cord. That's about $2,400 to $3,000 per truckload before they do the work of cutting and splitting it.
Commercial firewood requires even more labor: Felling or obtaining the timber, hauling logs, cutting them into stove-length pieces, splitting them and delivering them.
Snyder-Lijewski said it's difficult to determine precisely how much timber disappeared from KTWO Road because it was spread across multiple properties and wasn't measured before it vanished.
‘Pretty Ballsy’
For Snyder-Lijewski, the episode has grown into something larger than recovering a pile of logs.
“Many people are now installing security cameras,” she said. “Many people are starting to introduce themselves to their neighbors and exchange numbers to keep an eye on everybody's property.”
Neighbors who didn't necessarily know one another are now trading phone numbers, checking cameras and paying closer attention to unfamiliar vehicles, she said.
“They pissed off the wrong person,” said Snyder-Lijeweski, who has been gathering evidence for investigators and earnestly waiting on the call that an arrest has been made.
Reed, who said wood was also taken from her property, put it another way.
“Pretty ballsy.”
Kolby Fedore can be reached at kolby@cowboystatedaily.com.
