Letters

Koa Value Overstated in January Headline

While the January article on the alleged koa timber trespass case in South Kona covered the issue well, the headline (“Poachers Take Timber Valued at $1 Million”) was misleading. To obtain the value of the timber taken from state land, it is not correct to multiply the price for finished lumber of $13.85 a board-foot by the total number of board-feet taken. The loggers are not alleged to have taken finished lumber, but only standing trees. These, of course, have a much lower value than finished lumber, which has all the value added by the loggers, millers, and retailers. Just as coffee cherry is not as valuable as roasted coffee in a store, or sacks of macadamia nuts at a farm gate are less valuable than chocolate-covered mac nuts in a box, so stumpage value (the value of standing trees) is much less than that of finished lumber.

The loggers suspected of poaching from state land claim to have paid the neighboring landowner $0.80 per board foot for the right to harvest the trees, and stumpage prices for koa generally run from less than that to up to around $2.50 per board foot, depending on the amount of timber for sale, the quality and quantity of the timber, the access, and any restrictions the landowner puts on the logger.

The Division of Forestry and Wildlife estimated the value of the timber taken from state land at $213,000. Based on their estimates of the volume of koa taken, this works out to a stumpage value of $2.67 per board foot. The loggers themselves say they took no more than 15,000 board feet of timber; at a value of $0.80 per board foot, this comes to a total of $12,000.

Allowing these two figures to define the range of the value of koa taken, then, the alleged dollar loss to the state lies somewhere between $12,000 and $213,000, not $1 million.

— J. B. Friday
Extension Forester
University of Hawaii
Hilo

Volume 13, Number 8 February 2003