Someone Cut Timber on My Land Without Permission. What Now?

You walked to the back corner and the trees are gone. Stumps, ruts, a pile of tops going brown. Nobody called you, and now you are standing there doing math you do not know how to do.

States across the country have timber trespass laws, and most let you recover more than the wood was worth. Triple is the most common multiplier, according to a June 2026 National Agricultural Law Center webinar by Ross Pifer of Penn State, but the multiplier, and whether the cutter's intent matters, differ by state. In North Carolina, for example, G.S. 1-539.1 makes someone who cuts your timber without permission liable for triple the value of what they took. It is a civil claim you bring yourself, not something the state collects for you. Proving the number is your job, and the whole case gets built out of stumps, which weather and get harder to read every month.

Nothing on this page is legal advice. Call an attorney licensed in your state early, then read the rest of this while you wait for the call back.

So the first instruction is the one nobody expects.

Do not clean anything up

Not the tops. Not the ruts. Do not have somebody grind the stumps, push the slash into a pile, or bushhog the landing so it looks decent again.

Every piece of that mess is evidence of how much wood left and where it went out. Once it is tidied up it is gone, and no forester can put a number on it afterward.

Instead, this week:

• Photograph everything, with your phone's location tagging turned on. Wide shots of the whole opening. Close shots of individual stumps with a tape measure laid across the cut face. The skid trails, the landing, the gate, any ruts across the line.
• Write down the date you found it and the last date you know the trees were standing.
• Do not move the flagging, paint, pins or old wire you find out there, even if it is in the wrong place. Especially if it is in the wrong place.
• Do not go confront the crew. If equipment is still on the ground, photograph it from your own land and leave. Get the name off the truck door if you can read it from where you stand.

Is this theft, or an honest boundary mistake?

Both happen. They feel identical when you are standing in the hole.

A boundary mistake usually looks like a straight line of cutting that stops somewhere reasonable, following what somebody believed the line was. Old fence wire, a hedgerow, a woods road, a ditch. Theft looks different. It wanders, takes the good trees and leaves the junk, and happens on a tract where nobody lives.

The difference can change what you recover. In many states the multiplier goes away if the cutter was not at fault, and in some it shrinks. Pennsylvania scales damages from one times the value, for somebody with a reasonable basis to believe the land was theirs, to two times for negligence and three times for deliberate cutting. In North Carolina, criminal liability under G.S. 14-135 turns on somebody acting knowingly and willfully, and a logger who was handed the wrong line did not do that.

It changes nothing you do this week, though. Document the same way, count stumps the same way, call the same people. Sort out intent later, with somebody who does this for a living.

Do not accept a handshake number from the person who cut it before you know what was taken. An offer made in the first week is almost always made before anybody has counted anything, including the person making the offer.

What the law lets you recover

It depends on your state. From the same presentation:

• The multiplier varies. New Hampshire and Oklahoma run from three times to ten times. Connecticut uses five times for Christmas trees and three times for everything else. Texas uses no multiplier and measures damages by the mill price of the timber plus reasonable expenses.
• What gets valued varies. Statutes give "differing levels of guidance" on valuing the timber. Oklahoma uses fair market value "as determined by a registered forester."
• Extras vary. Many statutes allow court costs and attorney fees.

The one thing that holds everywhere: if you cannot show what was cut, there is nothing to multiply.

If your land is in North Carolina

The civil statute is short enough to read. G.S. 1-539.1(a) says:

"Any person, firm or corporation not being the bona fide owner thereof or agent of the owner who shall without the consent and permission of the bona fide owner enter upon the land of another and injure, cut or remove any valuable wood, timber, shrub or tree therefrom, shall be liable to the owner of said land for triple the value of such wood, timber, shrubs or trees so injured, cut or removed."

Subsection (b) does the same thing for anyone who willfully and intentionally sets fire to timber on somebody else's land. The statute has been on the books since 1945 and was last touched by S.L. 2021-78, according to the history line on ncleg.gov.

Read what the multiplier attaches to. It is triple the value of the wood. Not triple what the mill paid, not triple what your land is worth, and not triple what those trees meant to you. NC State Extension's Farm Law service, writing in 2021 about the Court of Appeals decision in King v. Duke Energy Progress, summed up the measure: the multiplier "is based solely on the commercial value of the timber once severed."

Some states put criminal penalties in the timber trespass statute itself, and others rely on general trespass law. North Carolina's G.S. 14-135 makes larceny of timber a Class G felony when a person knowingly and willfully cuts, injures or removes timber owned by somebody else without consent, and it requires a convicted defendant to pay restitution of three times the value of that timber at the stumpage rate, plus the cost of figuring out that value. It was last amended by S.L. 2023-63. Whether a district attorney charges anybody is not your decision.

Who do I call, and in what order?

University of Tennessee Extension's timber theft guide gives a short order: talk to the neighbor and the loggers, record and photograph everything, report to the sheriff, and bring in a consulting forester. The N.C. Forest Service's Timber Theft page gives a fuller one:

1. The N.C. Forest Service county ranger first. Find yours from the NCFS Contacts page; the statewide headquarters number is (919) 857-4801. In another state, find your state forestry agency through the National Association of State Foresters list at stateforesters.org and ask what it does on a trespass.
2. The logger, if you know who they are and the situation is calm. Use your own judgment about whether it applies.
3. The county sheriff, which NCFS says to do if the logger is unresponsive or you cannot reach them. This creates a report with a date on it, worth having even if nothing criminal comes of it.
4. A consulting forester, to count and measure what was cut.
5. An attorney licensed in your state, sooner than feels necessary.

A state forestry agency does not represent you and does not negotiate for you. Ask what the office will do, whether anybody comes out to the tract, and what that costs. Real help, and also the limit of it.

How does anybody prove what was cut after it's gone?

Stumps. That is the whole method.

A consulting forester counts every stump, measures the diameter of each cut face, identifies the species from the bark and the wood, and works backward to the standing tree that stump came from. From there you get volume, and from volume and a defensible price you get value. It is called a stump cruise.

Three things degrade it, all running against you right now. Cut faces weather and check, so diameter gets harder to measure cleanly. Bark sloughs off, and bark is how species gets identified on a hardwood stump. Sprouts and briars bury the whole thing. Weeks, not months.

The Society of American Foresters says "Some states have forester credentialing laws including licensing and registration statutes." If yours does, ask anybody you call for the number and check it with the state board. In North Carolina that is the N.C. Board of Registration for Foresters at 919-847-5441, and NCFS publishes a statewide list of consulting foresters that people apply to be on. Ask whether they have done stump cruises for trespass cases before. TimberClear lists timber businesses and routes introductions. We have not checked, verified or endorsed anybody on this site. See whether you need a forestry consultant, and what stumpage value is for the price side of the calculation.

What if it was my neighbor's logger?

This is the common one. North Carolina's statute anticipates it. G.S. 1-539.1(c) says:

"Any person, firm or corporation cutting timber under contract and incurring damages as provided in subsection (a) of this section as a result of a misrepresentation of property lines by the party letting the contract shall be entitled to reimbursement from the party letting the contract for damages incurred."

In plain terms: if your neighbor pointed the logger at the wrong line, the logger can go after your neighbor. Tennessee goes further. Its statute makes a landowner who marked the boundary wrong "jointly liable for the double damages." That is why the crew may point at whoever hired them, and it does not necessarily mean they are dodging you. What your state does here is a question for your attorney.

What if they say I signed something?

Get a copy of it before you say another word about it, and read what tract it describes. People do sign things at the kitchen table without reading them, and people also get shown documents with somebody else's tract on them.

If you did sign a timber sale contract and the cutting went outside what it covered, that is a contract fight rather than a straight trespass, and still worth having. How not to get ripped off by a timber buyer walks through what a real agreement should have said.

Do load ticket rules help me?

Partly, where they exist, and not the way most people hope.

North Carolina's G.S. 14-135.1 makes a timber buyer who buys wood by the load furnish the seller a load ticket for every load, with the county the wood was cut in and the amount on it. Load tickets and what left your land works through the statute and its exemptions. Ask your state forestry agency whether your state has a rule like it.

Notice the problem. Those tickets go to the seller, and in a trespass you were not the seller. What a rule like that does for you is establish that tickets exist somewhere, with a county of severance and a weight on them. An attorney can pursue those records. Worth knowing, and a long way from a self-help remedy.

How long do I have to act?

Not as long as you think. Pifer's review found that most timber trespass statutes do not set a deadline, and where one does, it may be up to five years. Otherwise your state's general rules decide.

North Carolina shows how tangled that gets. Its general civil limitations statute, G.S. 1-52, opens with "Within three years an action" and includes at subdivision (3) an action "for trespass upon real property," adding that where the trespass is continuing, the action runs three years from the original trespass. Subdivision (16) holds a separate rule for physical damage to property, turning on when the damage becomes apparent or reasonably ought to have.

Which rule a court applies turns on facts specific to your tract, so no page can give you a deadline you can count on. Call an attorney now. Even if the legal deadline turned out to be generous, the evidence deadline is not, and that is the one you are racing.

Keeping it from happening again

The N.C. Forest Service prevention list holds up anywhere:

• Get boundaries surveyed and marked with paint and posted signs, so nobody can claim a good-faith mistake next time.
• Walk your lines when a neighbor has a harvest going. During, not after.
• Keep a copy of your deed handy.
• Use a written contract for any harvest of your own, and hold a preharvest meeting with everyone who will be on the ground.
• Check credentials. North Carolina, for one, does not license loggers, so there is no license number to ask for there. Your state forestry agency can tell you what applies to yours. What rules loggers have to follow in North Carolina shows one state's version.

Walk the cut before it grows over

Pick a dry afternoon in the next few days and walk the cut with your phone. Photograph wide, then photograph twenty individual stumps with a tape across the cut face. Note the date.

Then make two calls. Your state forestry agency's local office, through stateforesters.org. And a consulting forester, telling them on the phone that you need a stump cruise for a trespass and asking whether they take that work.

Do not touch anything out there until both of them have seen it.