Imagine your neighbor stealing 170 year-old maple trees from your farm.
About five years ago a friend of mine bought a ten acre tract in E Texas as a 'get away'. She showed up one weekend to find the place clear cut, in the worst sense of the phrase not a tree left standing (old growth pine). Yes, she owned the timber rights, and there was no timber lease on the land.
She never did find out who did it.
I know the county pretty well, having run oil and gas lease crews in the area back during the late 70's. There is little doubt, in my mind, that county officials were involved. There is an attitude there, not uncommon in many rural areas to this day, that if you're not capable of defending what you own, shame on you.
It's looked upon as one way to discourage absentee, citified, ownership, I suppose ... :(
There was a family in the neighborhood I grew up in who stole trees off the land adjoining theirs for years... The victim was a corporation and the thefts occurred in an area remote to the company's activities so they didn't notice. When the company was made aware of it nothing was done as their was "no proof" of who did it (despite the drag marks leading right to the family's tractor shed). The family took all the sound oak and maple mill logs within an area of about 100 acres near their home.
Because they were stealing the wood and had no permits they weren't subject to regulation or scrutiny... didn't flatten tops, caused a lot of erosion damage, cut and left myriad softwoods and smaller trees to get at the good ones, left trash such as 2 stroke oil cans behind, etc. The only thing that stopped them was the kids grew up and moved out and the father got too old... The woods still suffer the wounds and show the scars--erosion in particular.
It's a much different experience for the forest that my sportsmen's club manages. Within a couple years of a selective cut it isn't obvious from the roads or trails that any cutting had occurred. You can only tell if you walk around and look for stump evidence.
John
Do they pack out all the tops? Chip them up? People come in an cutup firewood? Easy access? Even cutting up the tops to get them down on the ground they will take 5-10-15 years at the least to be gone. Longer if the tract is dry and for the stuff that is still up off the ground.
We log a bit for our own operation and go far and beyond common practices with regards to the way we leave the land. Flattening tops is something that would get you laughed off even the most proffessional timber job around here but we do it across the board though we are not cutting for quantity. That said, in our experience best case it takes at least 10 years to get to just stumps and that would be when you are cutting only small trees. We are back in places we cut 7-8 years ago and there are still tops visible even though they were cut up. Even cut up some tops will have 12" dia., or better, material in them. A 12" or 14" log, dat' takes a looong time to rot into the forest floor.
I have always thought logging is a lot like slaughtering beef, everyone who consumes the end product is usually agast at the sights they will see in the slaughterhouse.
Mark
Not to hijack the thread, but kinda like Bush's foreign policy?
On the last thinning, about 12 years ago, the logger cut the tops up for firewood and the small branches were chippped... they also used a tracked feller buncher and moved the trees to the dirt road with it. The latter cut down on the rutting problem. We picked a logger who has a firewood business and a feller buncher... Other loggers in the area use more traditional skidders and chain saws and, at best, limb the tops so they lay on the ground. Having tops laying around for 10+ years was not acceptable to us as we use the land for club events... After another decade of legal rangling we're pretty well set for another thinning this winter or next!
The local communities have a fair amount of say over logging practices and at a miminum tops must be flattened... As a competitive thing the loggers make a point of mentioning how they deal with tops if they sense you are concerened and they go above and beyond the regulations. The neighboring property was logged a couple years after ours and, like with your experiences, a decade later some of the tops are yet to fully rot away. This even though they were flattened and it is relatively wet much of the year.
That sentiment applies to many things... food in general!
John
"John Grossbohlin" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@corp.supernews.com...
I met a fella from Calif. a few years back whose family owns a big parcel of land in the SF Bay area, they live on the property and thus take good care of it. Every year or two they do a little selective logging as an extra source of income, they're so careful when they're done you would hardly know they had done any cutting. But one year CA Fish and Game (they have to approve such logging) announced the dirt road used for the logging had to be moved as it could wash out and endanger a nearby creek. The owners pointed out the road hadn't washed out since it was created in 1905, F&G said move the road or no permit. So at consiberable expense they planted over the old road and put a dirt road where F&G said it should be--first winter it washed out. So the owners filed some sort of protest, big mistake. After that F&G started finding all kinds of little reasons to deny logging permits, and faced with endless appeals and denials with legal bills eating up the profits from any logging they might eventually get to do, the owners caved in and let F&G know they wouldn't object in future no matter how little sense F&G's policies and decisions appeared to be. The F&G guys (who for some reason liked to leave their pickup trucks idle while they stomped around doing their inspections, didn't matter if it was an hour, they just let them run) were very clear (off the record) that they didn't give a crap if they were right or wrong, they had the power and they'd use it, like it or lump it.
There's an old joke about the list of statements never to be believed, I think one of them was, "I'm from the government, I'm here to help you."
Of course Rob, all that oil the US has gotten from Iraq has really been helping the economy.
Yep, and yet there are so many who are willing to give these yahoos even more power over their lives. How are you going to like dealing with the medical equivalent of those n*****ts if, or when, nationalized health care gets implemented?
I have a friend down in north east iowa who had walnut trees swiped off his hobby farm. i went down to evaluate the situation and do forestry consulting for him. state law say's unless you can prove intent, maximum payout value is at 3 times stumpage value. problem being who sets the stumpage value as there is a long way's between sawlog value and veneer log value. the logger claims he ran over the fence and cut the trees by mistake, also claims the trees to have a value of $2300. at 3 times stumpage. when i scaled the stump to top to come up with volume and looked at the remaining trees from which the larger trees were cut between and sure looks like the ones cut would have all had a veneer log. at todays high demand for black walnut i figured the trees could well be worth 15 to 20 grand. so even at 3 times stumpage there is no deturant, logger still makes over 13 thousand for an afternoons work. lawsuit is pending to try to prove intent. ross
Actually, the economy has been butchered on many other fronts, Mark. Not just the drain by the Pentagon's ill advised ventures into unknown unknowns. It was also damaged by greedy mortgage lenders and their Wall Street ilk. Besides, the fact that the 'oil return' from Iraq hasn't happened yet, doesn't mean that it wasn't the motivation to go there in the first place. Not only did they screw up by lying about their motive, they also screwed up by not capitalizing once they the capture of an oil rich country was 'Mission Accomplished'. Kinda makes you wonder if the whole deal wasn't about strategic control of Israel's back door as ordered by the ones who are truly in charge of the US foreign policy.
Shoulda read: not capitalizing once xxxx the capture
Also... I think the capture of an energy resource for the future needs of a nation is not necessarily a wrong thing to do. To conquer neighbour's resources is a legitimate cause for war. Mankind has been doing that for survival for millennia. And, as a true conservative, I believe wholly that if somebody isn't in control of their 'stuff', it is up for grabs. They snooze, they looze.[sic]
My bitch has been about the populace having been treated like dummies. People are smarter than that, Mark. And so are you.
Cut the political crap, eh?
One would be hard pressed to blame the sitting president for this problem. One could make a stronger case for blaming the Enron and MCI debacles on the Clinton administration than the current sub-prime mortgage problem on the existing administration.
You claim in a later post to be conservative, yet above you give victimhood status to the people who took out those loans. Those "greedy" mortgage lenders did not force people who were either too greedy, wishful, or ignorant to take out loans on homes they knew they would not be able to afford if and when interest rates went up. The real blame rests squarely upon those who bought more house than they were going to be able to afford and for not seriously considering the effects of interest rate hikes. Only if the possibility of those hikes was masked or fraudulent information was provided to the borrowers could one assign them victimhood status.
How many among us haven't been told by people selling houses or cars that they "can get us into" a much nicer house than that, or that we deserve or can afford that car that costs just a few thousand more than we are willing to pay? No matter what one's salary, one can get oneself into trouble listening to that kind of rationalization. It is hard to generate sympathy for folks who haven't considered all the impacts when making those kinds of choices. Some blame ought to be assigned to parents and educators for not doing a very good job of educating people to be more budget-conscious.
... snip of some stuff I'm not gonna touch.
Sounds like what happened to a friend of mine in S. MD. I really think it was a mistake in his case, but it was good woods, right near his house.
They logged out 200 acres in the lot behind mine. Man, they did nothing to flatten the tops and damaged a lot of the remaining timber in the process. All of the scarring on the standing trees from the equipment and dragging has ruined a lot of them for any potential harvest, those that it didn't end up killing.
Bull! They are all accountable to their own decisions. Yet, the lenders have promoted their wares under the guise that nothing would ever go wrong. They have given the equivalent of free booze for life to alcoholics. One CAN be a conservative without feeling the need to throw everybody under the bus who's been tempted by money lenders.
Therein lies the trap. Who would have signed those loans when they truly understood the traps of increased mortgage rates. It is not giving them victimhood status any more than giving victimhood status to the inhabitants of Baghdad. Oh wait....
Bingo. Read my comments above. Do you really believe the lenders i these cases were any different than they have ever been in history? (Including their reps in biblical history?)=A0
I completely agree. Too many people have this feeling of euphoria that the potential increase of value in their homes will offset their true 'net' debt-load. A lot of those people ARE ignorant. A LOT of those money lenders prey on those people. To deny that is silly.
And you are?
I'm someone posting accidentally under my wifes account, and extremely tired of every fricking discussion turning political on newsgroups. That's who I am.
And you are?
ALIVE!!!!!
Doesn't have to have county involvement, necessarily. I have a friend whose neighbor cut down an alder tree screen he had when he wasn't there to improve their view of the river. Of course, they thought it was their property.. Right...... Jippo loggers who cut down old growth redwood trees in state property next to the highway or on along the border of privately owned plots adjoining their logging operation and on and on.. Now where exactly is that property line? Your right. It often ocurs on property where the owner is normally not there. I also think its because the risk of jail time appears small... well, here in Northern California anyway. May be different in other states. Mostly if caught ,they just have to pay for the value of the trees or loss.. They don't seem to have that much to lose to stop them..
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