Ever clear cut the wrong tract?

[Southside]

This past fall I looked at a decent sized parcel.  It was the family farm and when the owners passed away they willed it to several family members, broken up into new plots. One of the new owners had called me and wanted to talk about a harvest.  She showed me a division plot, all done up and registered with the county, but there were no interior reference points on the ground so it was hard to know where the plots changed, which was critical as the lot went from smaller pine to larger oak.  The owner of this one part told me stories about visiting her grandparents farm as a kid and playing, etc.  She was going to build a small house, wanted a garden, and maybe one day a pond.  Nothing fancy, but looking for a way to get out of the city life she was living. 

The owner knew nothing about trees, she was actually touching a pine and asked me if it was an oak when we walked the lot.  She was very pleasant and after we spent a couple of hours there she understood that getting a survey done was imperative and that she needed to educate herself about her plans and new asset before agreeing to any harvest plan as doing this right was very important to her.  She actually commented that she did not understand why some landowners allowed some of the harvest practices we see all too often.   

Today when getting off the skidder my phone rang, it was her.  To say she was upset is an understatement.  It seems several of the other family members / new owners decided to cash in on their new found fortune, well within their rights, but I am sure you can guess what she told me next.  Yup, the feller buncher beat the surveyor to the lot and for some reason elected to start on her plot, clear cut.  To make things worse it has been very wet here, and the ground is soft, so from her description it is a mess. 

She wanted to know if I could help her figure out where to begin, what her options were, at first I told her that I am not a licensed forester so I was not sure I could give her a value that would hold up in court, but I heard her voice drop, figured if she was calling me she did not know where else to turn so I agreed to meet her and the surveyor at the lot on Friday and look at things. 

The owner is under the impression this was intentional, I don't even know who the logger is so I have no idea, but honestly I can't see how this could accidentally happen.  I mean we can all cut over a line, never done it myself but came some awfully close one time, only by luck and a bad lean the wrong way did I not. 

Anybody have any suggestions other than calling the State on what I can advise her?  Not like I want to get involved but if this were a family member of mine and they did not know where to turn I would hope somebody would step up.  Ugg....

[clww]

This is awful to read. If I was her, I'd start looking for attorneys, but may change my view on that after I had cooled off some and heard what the other side was offering to do.
This is a perfect example of why we never, ever start a job prior to everything being marked, including all buried utilities.

[Corley5]

  Sounds like she needs to talk to the rest of the family and if that doesn't go well it's time to go to a lawyer  :( :( 
  A former area logger was working with a local real estate agent cutting tracts.  They went to look at a white cedar swamp, came to a deal and he began cutting.  When he was almost done the MiDNR showed up.  The property was state land.  He was a mile off where he was supposed to be and at the time the skidder was also stuck and leaking hydraulic oil into the wetland.  The real estate agent would take no blame even though he showed him the tract but the logger should have checked the property description.  The State confiscated the cedar which was very nice cabin logs and a few fence posts, about 80 cords total and he had to go to court and pay restitution to the State.  The oil leaking into the wetland charge was dropped.   This was the second time he'd been in trouble for timber trespass.  The first time he was cutting along an old barbed wire fence line grown into trees that the LO told him was the property line.  He never checked it with a compass and was cutting a round forty until the neighboring LO called a consulting forester.  That cost him some $$$.  After the second offense the Court warned him that the next time would be a felony.  He's not logging anymore     

[barbender]

    That's really too bad, I feel for the gal. The loggers I have seen that cut across lines etc., seem to have a habit of it. Anyone can make a mistake, but most of the time this happens with people that don't give a rip.

[WDH]

She needs to hire a registered Forester to do a stump cruise to determine the value of the timber that was cut.  In Georgia, I have seen treble (3 times the timber value) damages awarded in this type of case. 

[CCC4]

Somebody is gonna be spending some money!

[Gearbox]

What WDH said x2 Gearbox

[Ken]

Never clearcut the wrong property but sent a whole crew of pre-commercial thinners to the wrong property one day.  I just pointed at an aerial photo and told my foreman at the time to lead the guys into the property I pointed to.  I found out later that day that I had indicated the property next to the one we were supposed to do.  The landowner happened to show up that day to 7 or 8 spacing saws doing their thing.  He wasn't too pleased although he did get a bunch of silviculture work done for free.  Never made that mistake again, yet.

[Ryan D]

Never clearcut the wrong property but sent a whole crew of pre-commercial thinners to the wrong property one day.  I just pointed at an aerial photo and told my foreman at the time to lead the guys into the property I pointed to.  I found out later that day that I had indicated the property next to the one we were supposed to do.  The landowner happened to show up that day to 7 or 8 spacing saws doing their thing.  He wasn't too pleased although he did get a bunch of silviculture work done for free.  Never made that mistake again, yet.

Had the same thing happen one day when I was a foreman. Landowner was pretty hot until I explained what we were doing. We ended up finding him some funding and I finished the job for him on the weekends. I'm still managing his lot for him now that I am out on my own.

[Southside]

She needs to hire a registered Forester to do a stump cruise to determine the value of the timber that was cut.  In Georgia, I have seen treble (3 times the timber value) damages awarded in this type of case.

WDH -

In your experience was it 3 times the stumpage or 3 times the mill delivered value?

Thanks

[Jeff]

It's going to be stumpage.

[WDH]

Yes, stumpage.

[Southside]

So today I went an visited the lot with the owner.  Oh my, somebody is going to go to jail.  Fortunately for her they did not flatten her entire piece as it sort of wraps around behind another piece.  This crew is a big, outfit.  Buncher, two skidders, two slashers, whole tree chipper, couple of chip vans, swing loader, D6 dozer, service truck all sitting there. 

Started off where the surveyor had set a flag by the road and followed that up to an old piece of rebar he had dug up and flagged - pretty straight forward, so I follow the flag line for a hundred yards or so, looks OK, walking it the timber to the south is all cut and to the north is intact, seems to be a straight line of trees.  We get up there a bit and the owner and her sister both look at each other and say something is wrong, they keep saying there were trees where we are standing a few days ago.  Looking around at the stumps it appeared they were right, clearly some had been cut a couple weeks ago and a section were all very fresh.  Then I noticed a piece of flagging quite a bit out into the cut on a bent over sapling, walked to that and could see the another along the back line.  Turned around ( I was a hundred yards from the tree line at this point) and could see a nice, straight line, connecting the back line flag with the bent over sapling flag, right to the roadside flag - uh oh, that is the surveyor line.  Got to looking at the flagging running on the tree line - almost every piece had been broken and re-tied, yea because I do that all the time.  From that perspective I could see the cut line has a nice big bow in it to the north, but walking it with the ups and downs the line looks straight.   It appears to me that the for what ever reason the cutter got going too much to the north to make his line cut and kept going at the wrong angle, began to clear to the south and at some point realized he was over the line.  Ok - maybe that was not intentional, probably negligent, but looking at the older stumps I would say he got out of dodge when he realized what had been done.  Then the real problem happened, somebody clearly moved the flagging back to the north in an attempt to clean up the line, and took out the rest of the trees that belonged to the landowner who had contacted me. Looks good walking along it until you get to the high point in the back and then not so much.  I did not look at every stump, bud did see quite a few nice red and white oaks, and quite a few grade poplars.  Based on the remaining oaks that are there I am guessing these were nice trees.  I put the owner in touch with a forester I spoke with who said he could do a stump cruise for her and gave her the contact info for the local Forest Service folks I have had dealings with. 

At first I did not think it was a big deal as one would never realize what had happened if you did not look closely, but by the time I left I got the impression that somebody knows exactly what they did and thinks they got away with it. 

[barbender]

I hope someone does go to jail. If they moved a survey line that could perhaps show criminal intent in court. I wonder if it could be possible to go after more than just the stumpage. This wasn't just a tract of timberland, she wanted to build a home there and if they wrecked the lot for her, maybe should could sue for more money. We used to have an outfit here that, when they saw nice timber on an adjoining tract, they thought it easier to ask forgiveness than permission >:(

[Ron Scott]

Yes, she needs a land surveyor to determine her property lines, a professional forester to determine the value of all the resource damage in addition to the timber value removed and an attorney to handle the legal case.