I have about a dozen white pines 10" to 18" dbh that have damage from contact with the forwarder or feller along the skid trails. I know the logger was trying to minimize the damage and painted over some of the most damaged trees but I am wondering if I should just take these trees out and saw what I can out of them. My fear is that they will never grow properly and in the meantime compete with the better trees and young growth for light and water.
Anybody here have any experience with this?
Bill
It depends upon how bad the damage is. If the bark is only skinned to 1/3rd or less of the tree's diameter and if the trees aren't damaged or gouged into the cambiam layer under the bark layer, they should recover ok.
Just remove the worst or most excessively damaged trees that may be competing with a better quality crop tree.
Depending on what is growing near them I might leave them. Is the logging job finished now? Would they be of some benefit as a bumper tree on a future logging job? Do you have a forester over seeing the job and what does he say? I know this doesn't answer your question but maybe point you in the right direction as to what is your best option.
1. Don't hire that logger again.
2. Don't paint over damage--spores land on the damaged surface almost instantly and painting over the damaged area just improves the habitat. Best defense is to let the surface dry ASAP.
3. Don't log with skidders. On forests I worked on we stopped allowing skidders more than 20 years ago. Too much damage and they are generally not as cheap to use as loaders. When I consulted for awhile after retiring from that job, the guys with the loaders always underbid the skidder guys. Skidders apply about 15 psi ground pressure which means high compaction potential, loaders less than 4. Skidders pass over the same ground many times, depressing the growth potential by compaction and root damage; loaders pass over any particular spot 2 or 3 times, almost always working on a cushion of slash. One of the small projects I had as a consultant was thinning an abandoned Christmas tree patch. Trees had been planted on a 6 ft. spacing and were about 8-10 inches DBH when thinned. Loader logged to about 12' spacing and there was very little damage in spite of the tight spacing.
3a. Bumper trees are probably not needed if you follow #3.
4. Now, to your question, I can't really answer it without seeing the trees, the damage, the skid trails. Generally if they are otherwise good trees, especially fast growing, not competing with trees that are almost as good but which are undamaged and damage is confined to less that 1/3 of the circumference, I would leave the tree. Probably the most important consideration is whether they are competing with other trees because then they are detracting from trees with better potential. Another way to look at it, is the tree good enough to keep--better than competing trees--even if the lower log has decay?
Not seeing the site it is hard to give an opinion , but I have many bumper trees here that I leave just for that.
In an ideal worl you would have straight pull trails , but it don,t work that way. The trees if you cut them will yeild nice wood now , but what is behind them that the next tree you pull or have pulled out going to get rubbed ???
Well it would be kind of hard to log without skidders around these parts :) and your going to get some skinned up trees on most any job no matter how careful you are particularly along the main trails, easy to do if the job was skidded tree length. It is a good idea to leave bumper trees on the trails. The pickiest landowners/forester I have worked with considered anything more than 100 sq inches to be serious damage and I agree. If it were my land and I could cut them at any time I would probably leave them and see what happens.
Pilot1, I would love to see a pic of the loader you mention in your post :) :P
And I'd like to post a pic, but all my pics are from back when I was using film cameras. And a search of the net doesn't show much, mostly loaders loading trucks. The machines are similar to this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Linkbelt4300.jpg
Track mounted, armored underneath to prevent damage from stumps and slash. In a clearcut, he relays the logs, picking up all he can reach from one spot, setting them down on the side toward the landing, then going to the other side of the pile and doing the same thing over again. Sounds really inefficient, but the opposite is true. No chokers to deal with, the machine is working almost all the time. Sits on slash so ground disturbance & compaction is minimal. Depending on the logger, he may pile the slash from where he sat when moving the logs, or may come back after all the logs are at the landing. If a really long skid is involved (700ft+) he may have a skidder, swinging the logs to the skid trail.
In a thinning, it's a little more difficult. He picks up the logs and shifts them along the side of the machine instead of swinging them around. Keeping them parallel to the tracks, he knows where they are in relation to the crop trees. Frankly, I was amazed he could operate so well in a tight stand. But as always, things are operator dependent.
Regarding site damage: Ever hear of a Slashbuster? A big toothed disk mounts on the end of the loader boom, turns 360 rpm and really tears up the slash. See: http://www.slashbuster.com/brushcutters.htm We clearcut a stand of 80 year old second growth and slash was too deep to plant through, but the fire folks said the fuel load was acceptable. My reforestation guy hired a contractor with a Slashbuster and had him work the area to create planting spots, dropping the disk every 8 feet and picking it up when he saw dirt start to fly. The guy just eyeballed the spacing, but it was almost perfect, giving us 700 planting spots per acre.
Work was done in February. Lots of rain and the operator shut down several days because it was too wet. The forest soil scientist was interested in what the machine would do in our compactable soils, so he measured compaction before and after the job. Increase in area of compacted soil was 2%.
Isawlogs: Your pic shows you with a horse, suggesting you do horse logging. Roger Daugherty, the logger I worked with most and who logs with a loader, also uses horses. He recently bought a processor, so he uses the most primitive and the most up to date technology, depending on the site and the landowner's objectives.
Horse in the pic pulls a wagon with me on it ... ;) I use a skidder, that loader you write about would not last a day here working. Might be effecient where it only has to get wood out near the landing , but I have skidding trails that go for over 1/2 a mile , I just can't see that being done with a loader . I aint got that much time on my hands. I would much rather have bumper trees and take less time to skid , just makes more sense to me.
I had guessed he was talking about a forwarder like I use. Here is an old picture of mine with a load on. You can haul two bunks of 100 inch long logs or I have even hauled 30+ foot logs. It will hold right close to 5 cords on a load or two and a half loads per semi load. And I do a lot of hardwood thinnings and can easily manuver thru the trees without damage.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11467/Valmet-840-2.jpg)
But they are not a cheap machine and are designed for high volume work. Reasonably good used ones still bring a hefty price and take a lot of maintenance. But I have had to run some distances on recent jobs where I was over a mile from the woods to the landing down a steep drive where semi's could not go.
Skidders are not being used much here other than some very big grapple skidders by very large operations and mainly on clearcuts where they are slashing and/or doing a lot of chipping. Cable skidders are relegated to the very steep slopes like in SE MN around the Mississippi River valleys.
Pilot sounds like he is talking about shovel logging which is done in the northwest, not so much anywhere else in the country as it is only appropriate from a forestry perspective & cost effective in that region. Gary C. I call your machine a skidder it is a double bunk shortwood skidder :)
Thanks for the replies
As Gary C thought I was refering to a single bunk forwarder not a pole skidder. The logger was using a Franklin forwarder and Hydro-Axe with a shear head. This was a removal of jack pine from an uneven aged stand of jackpine, whitepine and oak per the county foresters request. The skid trails exsisted from a previous cut I had made about 8 years ago and I hauled out with a Tree Farmer CD5 forwarder that has since been scrapped. I think i was more carefull along the trails because I had more time and didn't have anotheer job to go too. There is so much white pine regeneration in this stand that the loss of a few trees will not be a problem. My main concern is the long term health of these trees.
On a related note, my other concern is those trees that were not damaged on the trunk but had root damage ande are left with exposed roots on the trail and were driven over with full forwarder loads of pulp.
Bill
Yup, shovel is another name for loader logging, but I don't hear it called shovel logging very often any more.
Here's a writeup by a logger who does it. http://www.g-eng.biz/le/logsys/shovel/shovel.html
The logs/trees need get from the forest to the landing, the only way I know of that will do no damage to the roots or bark is with a helicopter.
I would be more worried about the compaction and root damage of the trees along the trail rather than the skinning, if the skinning is under 100 sq, inches. The root damage for certain will harm the tree and it will have a much more significant impact on the trees health in the long run in my experience.
Harvested with two skidder crews in thick maple woods.
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11009/SD_Dineen1.jpg)
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11009/SD_Dineen2.jpg)
Four years later: Where's the damage, where's the trails. :D
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11009/SD_Selection-001.jpg)
(https://forestryforum.com/gallery/albums/userpics/11009/SD_Selection-003.jpg)