Theft of precious Bermuda Cedar downed in the hurricane is rampant says parks senior superintendent Martin Brown.

He said thieves risked their own safety by going out on the day of Fabian to gather trees and branches. Bermuda Cedar - an endemic species only found in Bermuda - can fetch around $13 for a foot square board in rough form but dried and milled cedar can cost up to $35 a square foot.

Mr. Brown said: "We have had a lot of cedar theft all over the Island. On the Friday of the storm a couple of areas in Somerset were cleared.

"Up by Hogs Bay they pulled out cedar in the middle of the night. We investigate it as much as we can but it is very difficult when everything has got pushed out with a bulldozer."

The highly-prized decorative wood has been illegally harvested since the 1600s and became even more valuable after a blight decimated 95 percent of Bermuda's cedar forest during the middle of the last century.

Thieves risk fines if caught plus compensation for the market value of the lost trees.

Mr. Brown said there was evidence one of the trees could have been replanted but was taken away by the thieves. Yesterday he was told cedar had been taken from physically handicapped centre Summerhaven and Winterhaven nature reserve in Smith's. He said cedars on Government land had been hard hit by the storm. "An awful lot of trees have come down and we have a number of staff replanting."

He said those which couldn't be replanted would be sold to be milled for furniture. Other pieces will be bartered for furniture or interesting pieces to put in the Botanical Gardens.

"Hopefully we are putting a small agricultural craft museum in the Botanical Gardens including cedar we have managed to reclaim, we'll be holding it for use for various projects in the parks.

"Unfortunately we lost a lot of old mature cedars which were rotting, the heart wood was decaying or losing its strength and structure."

He said four such trees were lost in the Botanical Gardens and four elsewhere but they were not suitable for milling.

Parks had lost an awful lot of their stock with up to 75 percent of trees suffering considerable damage, said Mr. Brown. Some trees had been partially or totally uprooted. "We have replanted 100 trees in the last week or two."

Fewer than 100 Government trees have been totally written off but they included hard woods such as false ebony and cassia.