I dropped in this past weekend for a quick couple nights. The site I ended up at had a large pile of fresh green cut cedar. This is the second time I've run into something like this during an Autumn trip. (Once on Alton, this time on S Kawish River.)

I have a hunch of what's going on here, but before I taint this thread with my opinion, I'd like to see if there is a reasonable answer for this. (Thanks in advance if you point me to a thread where this has previously been discussed.)

Reasonable answer??? One would like to believe that they are just branches from a much larger tree that went down in the last couple weeks, perhaps bucked and piled by the Forest Service or by a previous camper. But with the shutdown I'm guessing there isn't a whole lot of site maintenance happening so the latter would be the more likely scenario of those two. Northern White Cedars here are relatively free of disease or insect problems, so I don't suspect it had anything to do with that. Were there any larger cedar logs around?

If not any of those things, then my jaded kneejerk assumption is that the wannabe "bushcrafters" that come up here after quota season can't seem to follow any rules, and hack these down for firewood while discarding the boughs and smaller bits. Cedar burns decently well even when green and seems like it gets targeted when it's wet and soggy out. That's a big pile of remnants though and the "nobody can be that stupid" part of me wants to believe it wasn't cut down maliciously, because who the hell would do that? But then again, there's a lot of really stupid people out there and I've seen large trees hacked down in the park before.

We came across a 20-30' tall cedar that was clearly (and poorly) chopped down and bucked with an axe at site 567 on Long Island Lake in August this year, maybe 50 feet from the cook area. Bark was all stripped off as well, so it was obvious someone was lazy and wanted easy firewood, but never got around to cutting it all up. They were nice enough to leave the bark in a huge pile in the middle of the campsite though, with a bunch of stupid crap they tied out of it. Leave No Trace really doesn't register with some folks. Pretty sad.

Wow, that’s really sad to see. These people need to be banned.

Don't touch my cedar. So sad.

I saw that to a lesser extent on Hegman this year. I know it wasn't rangers because they'd throw them back in the woods. Which is what I did.

I was on the same site last year and the amount of damage in one year was depressing and maddening. If this continues the BWCA will be a completely different place in 10-15 years. I'd support tripling permit prices if it would triple the amount of rangers out there.

So, those that wrote they have theories….what are they?

Is this lake close to winter access points so someone is stock8 g up and hoping it dries out enough for use?

Is it some num-nut who thinks the rules don’t apply to them?

Unfortunately they could have done that to improve their view of the lake, which is disgusting if true.

Some just think there in a survival mode and watch to many of these TV shows.

Mocha: "So, those that wrote they have theories….what are they?


Is this lake close to winter access points so someone is stock8 g up and hoping it dries out enough for use?


Is it some num-nut who thinks the rules don’t apply to them?"

This was my thought, exactly. Someone comes in and cuts piles of green wood so when they come back in the winter or early next year, they have oodles of perfectly dry wood right at camp ready to burn.

My wife and I found a huge white pine that someone had tried to cut down with an ax but had given up. It looked to be just for fun, the tree was very large and will most likely die. Unbelievable what some people will do.