If, one day, you’re hiking through the Olympic Peninsula, staring at the rows of gorgeous evergreens, and you come across a stretch of dead, branchless trunks: go ahead and blame Christmas. Turns out thieves sometimes steal branches right off of trees in order to make those gorgeous pine bough decorations and wreaths that hang on the doors of anyone 30-years-old or older during the holidays.DNR pic of the saddest Christmas tree in all the landThe Washington State Department of Natural Resources posted information about two sites where 20,000 pounds of pine boughs were found to be missing in each. The latest section of stripped trees the agency found is a three-acre site off of Hwy 101, about 40 miles north of Forks. In an interview with the PI on Thursday, DNR spokesman Bob Redling said the bough thieves were just trying to turn a profit on the Christmas black market (the whitest, snowiest black market of them all).”The motive was profit…They were pretty much hacked off. They even took the itsy bitsy layers on top.” The DNR says trees that have their limbs sheared off like this are almost guaranteed to die. The agency estimates the total value of the pilfered, taxpayer-owned timber, if cut at maturity, would have been $50,000. And they’re on the hunt for whatever wonderfully decorated fireside den the group of crafty crooks is making their wreaths in.