Someone Cut Timber on Your Gorge Land: What KRS 364.130 Gives You

Gorge Journal · Land

What happens if someone cuts timber on your Kentucky land without permission?

Three times the value. KRS 364.130 makes the cutter pay treble stumpage value, treble property damage and your legal costs — regardless of intent.

Kentucky timber trespass is one of the few places in the statute books where the legislature wrote the words “regardless of state of mind” into a damages provision. KRS 364.130(1) applies to “any person, regardless of state of mind or whether the person believes to be authorized or not,” who cuts or saws down timber growing on the land of another without legal right or color of title. That person “shall pay to the rightful owner of the timber three (3) times the stumpage value of the timber and shall pay to the rightful owner of the property three (3) times the cost of any damages to the property as well as any legal costs incurred by the owner of the timber.”

Three separate buckets, then: treble stumpage, treble damage to the ground, and legal costs. “I thought it was my line” is not a defense to the trebling. It is only a defense if the cutter did specific paperwork first, which is the part of the statute almost nobody reads.

The paperwork that reduces treble damages to actual value

Subsection (2) is a safe harbor, and it is narrow. A defendant has to certify that before cutting, two things were true. First, a signed statement was obtained from the person the defendant believed to be the owner of all trees scheduled to be cut, stating that all the trees to be cut were on his property and none were on the property of another, and giving written permission to cut them. Second — and this is the step that gets skipped — either a written agreement was made with the owners of land adjacent to the cut that the trees were not on their property, or those adjacent owners were “notified in writing, delivered by certified mail, restricted delivery, and return receipt requested, of the pending cut” and raised no objection.

If that is all in place, the court “may render a judgment for no more than the reasonable value of the timber, actual damages caused to the property, and any legal costs.” No trebling. Subsection (2)(b) adds a clock to the mail route: if no written objection comes back within seven days from the date of the signed mail receipt, it is presumed — “for the purposes of setting penalties only” — that the notified owner had no objection.

Seven days, certified mail, restricted delivery, return receipt. That is the standard an adjacent-owner notice has to meet. A text message to a neighbor is not it.

Situation	What KRS 364.130 allows
Cut without right or color of title	3× stumpage value + 3× property damage + legal costs, regardless of state of mind — subsection (1)
Cutter did the subsection (2) paperwork	Court may award no more than reasonable value + actual damages + legal costs
Adjacent-owner notice by mail	Certified mail, restricted delivery, return receipt requested
No written objection returned	7 days from the signed receipt creates a no-objection presumption, for setting penalties only
Fence-row mistake by a residential or farmland owner	Reasonable value + actual damages + legal costs only — subsection (4)
Relationship to criminal law	Subsection (3): nothing here repeals KRS 514.030, and these penalties are “additional thereto”

The fence-row exception, and why it does not cover a logging crew

Subsection (4) was added effective June 29, 2017 by 2017 Ky. Acts ch. 66, sec. 1. It carves out “a residential property owner or farmland owner maintaining his or her fence row” who unintentionally removes an adjoining owner’s timber “as the result of a good-faith mistake in the location of an unmarked boundary line.” That owner is liable only for the reasonable value of the timber, actual damages and legal costs.

Note every limit in that sentence. It is for a residential or farmland owner, maintaining a fence row, unintentionally, in good faith, on an unmarked boundary. A commercial harvest on a wooded parcel is none of those things. And the word “unmarked” cuts in the landowner’s favor on absentee ground: a boundary that has been surveyed, marked and painted is harder to mistake in good faith than one that has not.

Why this reads differently on absentee Gorge land

Most of the land I show around the Red River Gorge is wooded, steep, and visited by its owner on weekends. That combination is exactly the one this statute was written for: nobody is standing at the line when the cutting happens, and the only record of where the line was is whatever the deed and the survey say. In my practice the single cheapest thing a buyer of wooded acreage can do after closing is have the boundary walked and marked while the seller’s knowledge of it is still available — because subsection (4) turns on the word “unmarked,” and because a marked line is what makes a subsection (2) adjacent-owner notice land in the right mailbox.

I will not quote you a stumpage figure. Stumpage value is a measured, species-and-market question for a consulting forester, and the whole damages calculation in subsection (1) multiplies whatever that measurement turns out to be. What I can tell you is which documents decide the question: the deed, the survey, and the written consents the statute describes. Our notes on mineral and timber rights on Gorge land cover who owns the standing timber in the first place, and the survey questions to ask before buying Gorge land cover how the line gets established. If you are earlier than that, start with buying land in the Red River Gorge.

What the state separately requires of the logger

KRS 364.130 is a damages statute between private parties. It sits alongside a regulatory duty: KRS 149.344(1) says any logger or operator conducting timber harvesting operations “shall use appropriate best management practices,” and (2) prohibits harvesting “in a manner that is causing or will likely cause water pollution.” Under (3) the cabinet issues a written warning with a reasonable abatement period, and repeat failures move into a “bad actor” process. The agency is the Kentucky Division of Forestry within the Energy and Environment Cabinet.

On Gorge parcels that matters more than average, because most of them drain into something. A cut that silts a stream is a water-quality matter whether or not the trees were on the right side of the line.

I am your agent, not your lawyer. Whether to pursue a timber trespass claim, and what it is worth, is a conversation for counsel and a forester. Knowing that the multiplier is three, that intent is irrelevant to it, and that the cutter’s only escape is paperwork dated before the cut, is the part that belongs in a landowner’s file.

Does it matter that the logger thought he had permission?

Not to the trebling. KRS 364.130(1) applies “regardless of state of mind or whether the person believes to be authorized or not.” Belief only helps if the defendant can certify the specific pre-cut paperwork in subsection (2), or fits the narrow fence-row exception in subsection (4).

Is timber trespass also a crime in Kentucky?

KRS 364.130(3) says the section “shall not be construed as repealing any of the provisions of KRS 514.030” — theft by unlawful taking — “and any penalties provided by this chapter shall be considered as additional thereto.” The civil trebling and any criminal exposure are separate questions; charging decisions belong to a prosecutor.

How long does an adjacent owner have to object to a pending cut?

Seven days. Under subsection (2)(b), if no written objection is received within seven days from the date of the signed mail receipt, it is presumed for the purposes of setting penalties only that the notified owner had no objection. If you receive certified, restricted-delivery mail about a neighboring cut, that is the window.

Last updated October 26, 2026.

By Marcos Gil, REALTOR® — Keller Williams Commonwealth · KY Real Estate License No. 296259 · Call or text (859) 310-1209.