A man recently was fined $1,000 for having 35 pounds of petrified wood and parts of protected birds in his vehicle/Kurt Repanshek file photo
A North Carolina man with a hankering for wildlife and petrified wood has been fined $1,000 after rangers at Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona found 35 pounds of petrified wood and a trash bag with wings of birds protected by the Migratory Bird Act in his vehicle.
Joseph Nolan, age 43, hometown unlisted, was sentenced at a recent federal court hearing after he pleaded guilty in March to two of the counts brought against him.
According to court documents, on the night of July 5, 2016, National Park Service Ranger Jarred Mitrea was out on patrol in Petrified Forest and noticed Nolan driving through the park after it was closed to traffic and crossing the double yellow center line. Additionally, the ranger said the man was driving 32 mph, more than twice the posted speed limit.
After pulling Nolan over to talk about those violations, the ranger "immediately noticed Nolan's demeanor appeared nervous." After asking the man whether he had collected any petrified wood from the park, Ranger Mitrea said Nolan initially said no, then "admitted that he had."
A search of the man's car turned up a 25-pound piece of petrified wood along with smaller pieces. Additionally, the ranger found a trash bag with "two sets of fresh bird wings." The man told the ranger he had collected the wings from dead birds he found while driving from North Carolina to Arizona.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service staff later determined that the wings came from a Red-tailed hawk and a Barn owl, species protected by the Migratory Bird Act.
Ranger Mitrea also found a sealed cooler in Nolan's car that contained a dead Tiger Salamander, a species native to both Arizona and Texas. Park biologists say that is the only species of salamander known to exist at Petrified Forest National Park. While Nolan told the ranger he had picked up the salamander in Texas, and that it had been alive earlier in the day, Texas law requires a license to collect salamanders from the wild and he was charged with violating that law.
The U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Arizona charged Nolan with possession of petrified wood, several traffic violations, and violating the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. In addition to the fine, Nolan was ordered to pay $20 in special assessment fees, sentenced to serve one year of unsupervised probation, and banned from all national parks, national monuments, national recreation areas, national wildlife refuges, national forests, and Bureau of Land Management lands in Arizona, except for passing through them on state, federal, or local roads.
Comments
If every adult visitor stole 35 pounds of petrified wood- Would there be any left in the park? Lands around the park also contain wood. Some land is for sale. There are retail outlets selling wood. Other states also have wood.
Fine seems a bit low: Should make him build/fix trails there in mid July for a week. You are right Sam, can buy just about any size chunk of wood just outside the Park (I believe they mark them so they indicate "purchased" to save any grief upon inspection when you exit) or in Holbrook.
The idea of making the convicted person pay by doing physical labor in the park sounds like a fitting punishment. While I was superintendent of Petrified Forest a local magistrate imposed this on a number of conv thieves. As it turned out, the park itself was punished by having to supervise hostile, sloppy, and incompetent forced workers. It ended up costing us more than it would had we done the work ourselves.
Hang him from the nearest petrified tree.
Only a $1000 fine? It should be $1000 per pound of petrified wood and per bird wing. That may be a better deterrent.
He clearly is not well, mentally.
should have been a$10,000.00 fine.
You guys are getting HEATED UP about this park in Arizona. Maybe some of you will WARM UP to the idea of calming down about this HOT topic. (get it? It's in Arizona so its hot)