Trees targeted for music in Fraser Valley

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FRASER VALLEY (NEWS1130) – They can make beautiful music, but you shouldn’t cut them down if they don’t belong to you.
    
The RCMP is trying to stop people from cutting down trees on public land for music instruments.
    
It’s been a growing problem in the Fraser Valley over the past several years, where people go after the wood of broadleaf maple trees.

“I guess the trees grow a certain way, which a lot of people call…curly maple, and these trees are sought after for the making of musical instruments, guitars, mandolins,” says RCMP Cst. Cameron Kamiya with the Forest Crime Investigation Unit.

“All this wood that is harvested legally should be, when it’s sold to a mill…have proper paperwork with it when they make the sale.”

In late March a man pleaded guilty to theft under $5,000 after police found four men, one holding a chainsaw near a freshly cut maple tree, on Abbotsford city land in January 2011.

RCMP say Troy Peters was handed a six-month conditional discharge, a six-month probation order, ordered to pay the city $500 and told not to have any saws or tools to cut down trees.
    
Last year, Mounties reported an average of 50 tree theft cases a year.

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