"Low-Impact Forestry" by Mitch Lanksy

[BrandonTN]

Anyone read this book?

"....Logging machinery has gotten bigger and more powerful and is more productive at removing wood fast.  But these machines can leave a big footprint in the woods. The cost of the machinery is so high that it forces loggers to cut huge quantities of wood just to pay expenses. Those loggers who take more time to be more careful are often penalized, rather than rewarded. It takes more and more forest to support fewer and fewer jobs. Such a system hurts botht eh forest and local communities over the long run."

--an excerpt from the Introduction.
Ive had this book for over almost 2 years, and havent gotten around to reading it....mostly because its so technical, and Im still learning the names for things.

[jim king]

I live in that book and appreciate your dilema.  Read my thread above in Forestry and Logging   under "logging methods" .

[slowzuki]

There are two issues at hand, everything I have read indicates the largest logging equipment actually has the least impact per acre lets say doing clearcutting.  The ground pressure is low, big reach on the machines etc.

Now one of those machines has to clearcut an awful lot of acres to pay for itself and its operator so in the end I'd say the total impact is higher.

I'm a big fan of small scale forestry simply because the large machines divert so much money away from communities.  They replace people with the parts truck and those parts are increasingly coming from far, far away.

The profit margins are thin and the stress of making payments on a half million dollar rig is incredible.  Chomping down 10 or 20 acres a day to me is mind boggling but required.  In our area that kind of forestry is great for poplar stands etc but there are so many other mixed age/species stands that could be better managed small scale.  Its too expensive to manage them that way with one of those machines so it isn't done.

[SwampDonkey]

I was talking to one logger who worked for a local forest company for years and he was asked to buy 'used' forestry equipment at a cost of $1.5 million in order to continue operating on company ground. Well he said that was the end for him, he has worked for himself on private woodlots since leaving the forest company 3 years ago. Operates two skidders. He said he's not going to fork over that much dough for warn out equipment, constantly needing repairs, and having to make many trips 3 hours away for parts to limp along. He's into the logging business to make money, not go behind.

[OneWithWood]

Brandon, a good companion book would be 'Positive Impact Forestry' by Thom MacAvoy.

[SwampDonkey]

My uncle was telling me of a fellow that bought a used skidder to harvest timber from his land. He's not a large land owner, nor a harvest contractor. Just works his own ground. He's basically clearcut all his ground to make payments on a skidder. He had a team of horses to start with and sold them.  It doesn't sound very logical to me. But, I bet the bank is happy. One more guy making interest payments.  ;)

[crtreedude]

Learning to live simpler, using older techniques, harvesting trees that normally a logger wouldn't be able to use - lots of ways to make a go of it when you own the forest and the equipment.

And it can be fun too. I have found I like working with horses - thinking of breeding some mules too (since I am originally from Missouri, it just seems appropriate... )

I like low tech, less cost. Not always applicable, but it is on a smaller scale

[slowzuki]

Something going on in our province that I'm sure swampy is paying attention to as well is this drive to self sufficiency.  Our area get federal money from other provinces for the upkeep of certain things like inter provincial highways etc.

Well a group of people that had a set of ideas that were paid attention to before is back again now trying to make a case for their theory on how to make more money in the province.  The short of their solution so far, move everyone to cities or at least their jobs, have factories etc, cut more trees, process in super mills.

They keep repeating that to make the province self sufficient we have to have wage parity with the central parts of Canada such as Toronto.  The only way I can figure this makes sense is they are analysing how much money the government collects in taxes and figure thats were incomes and property values have to be to get enough taxes.

But then their costs go up, the gov't employees will need more money to live, the costs of providing and maintaining everything increases.  I can't see how making everything as unaffordable as in Toronto will help our situation one bit.

I also don't see how building supermills helps either, it just means an area will be hit incredibly hard when markets falter.  Smaller more diverse mills aren't as sucepible to this and are more flexible for production.

Selling cheaper OSB to the states isn't going to make the province richer as a whole, especially when you just moved the people from the countryside into towns and feller bunchers are doing all our harvesting.

[SwampDonkey]

I think a closer step to their goal would be to amalgamate all the Maritimes into one province. Too much government for a small population. We are too busy fighting NS over beer breweries and natural gas and fighting PEI over potato production. We need to put an end to all that nonsense and get down to brass tacks. One government for the region, one voice. Also, knock down these trade barriers between provinces and stop pumping federal funding into areas to disadvantage others. Remove this notion of centralization. Freight on a Volvo shipped into Halifax should not cost me more than buying it in Ontario after having been trucked up there from here. Invest your money in the Maritimes and not in Toronto. Until we see this, the hole notion of self sufficiency is just a pipe dream, and I gotta wonder what's burning in the pipe. ;)

Just my 2 cents.

[slowzuki]

Thats a good point Swampy.  I think they are trying to move that way slowly, our merging drivers licences and colleges.  With quebec between us and the rest of Canada we really do have to work together.