[Carl Russell]

Adding some texture to this thread, here is a short video that I made to try to highlight some of the factors I have been trying to describe…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-xKt-uaLE8

Hybrid-Power Forestry.m4v

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-xKt-uaLE8

Carl

[Carl Russell]

@Baystatetom 38179 wrote:

…… forestry is an art and not just a science……

……we were all agreeing about an issue but for some reason were still compelled to yell about it.
~Tom

One of my mentors would say, “Send seven foresters into the woods, each with a different color paint, and when they came out, every tree would have paint on it of one color or another”.

Carl

[Carl Russell]

@Countymouse 38159 wrote:

…..I find it interesting that there is so much distrust of research in forestry. I am getting the feeling like this science and research was not performed correctly or was not presented properly. Real science should be understandable to everyone. It shold make conclusions that everyone can understand and these conclusions should be defendable to anyone who encounters them……. .

You are exactly right….. the problem is that the research that supports modern forestry was funded by US Gov’t and indirectly by industry……. the underlying assumption in forestry research has always been to manage forests as economic engines. The “Science” of forestry is based on economics and statistics related to maximizing tree growth for the production of timber. There is also the science related to forest ecology, but this is typically not employed in the context of forestry related to timber harvest, it is usually just used so that foresters are informed about the processes that occur in the woods.

The “science” that drives timber production actually supports an agricultural approach to forest management. It is the basis for decisions about how to manipulate components of the forest so that tree growth is maximized. The blind spot is that ecological concerns are down-played. There really isn’t a science that supports timber production within an ecologically intact forest.

There have been some efforts by individuals and small groups of foresters who have tried to formulate management standards that protect natural ecological processes while improving timber assets. Very few have taken hold in the economically driven industry. Jason Rutledge and I are two who have recognized the applicability of draft animals to a harvesting method that supports such an approach.

While I do want to allow natural ecological processes, I would not describe it as “hands-off”. I do not concentrate on trying to “balance” a certain set of components in order to “manage” the forest, but I do adhere to some basic understandings about forest ecology to address the interest to improve financial assets of forest products.

Trees are the defining factor of forests. Trees that occupy a site grow until they fully occupy it. This high density leads to the development of many processes that support other aspects of the forest community. Whenever density is changed, there are effects that ripple through that community. Managing forests to maximize economic return leads us to change density homogeneously across large tracts, so that the site can be “filled” with a consistent product growing at the highest consistent rate. “Filled” is a relative term. In order to maximize tree growth, competition needs to be reduced, so stocking levels are typically reduced significantly below where they would be in a naturally occurring forest.

So with my objective to increase value on a site, I also need to reduce stocking. However, the ecological factors that are supported through high stocking are important. My solution is to release crop trees individually. Finding trees that will become high value stems in the future, then reducing direct competition without disturbing other areas where high stocking is maintained, is a simple example. Mechanical operators have a very hard time doing this, while horses are ideally suited to it.

High stocking also has other aspects that have ecological importance. Competition causes mortality, which leads to standing dead trees, and downed decomposing coarse woody debris. I leave a large amount of low quality material in the woods rather than creating traffic on the land in order to remove it. Low value wood typically is harvested in large quantities in order to make up for the relative cost of handling. Mechanical operations NEED to handle large quantities of this stuff, which leads to high harvest volume per acre, reducing stocking, and it also leads to whole tree harvesting, which reduces biomass retention.

Horses cannot move this stuff in those quantities, so it is a real deal breaker if we try, but rather than leaving these poor competitors alive, I cut them, salvage value that makes operational sense, and leave the rest. I also incorporate non-commercial thinning, cutting trees like weeding around crop trees, but not spending additional cost on removal. This method is a profit killer for mechanical operators working under the current economic model of timber harvest, but it actually makes the effort of enacting forest improvement with horses more functional.

Forests obviously are not static. Openings occur from time to time, from disease, overmaturity, or some other physical impact like wind. In some landscapes there are instances where large tracts are destroyed by fire, for example, but at least in the Northeast, the forest rarely maintains an even-aged character for very long. While managing even-aged stands makes the best economics sense, there are very few instances where this practice is supported by ecological reality. Creating small openings, 1/4 – 2 acres, releasing patches of established regeneration, and creating an irregular age distribution is much more in line with natural ecological processes. Again harvesting to create this type of forest composition is very complicated and expensive using machinery, but draft animals are ideally suited to working like this.

As far as disease or invasive species, I see these as indicators that ecological processes are compromised. Currently we are battling these conditions, assuming that what we have been doing has had no adverse effects on the productivity of our forest ecosystems. I see disease as an environmental pressure that has always sorted out the weak, but in natural systems it also provides dead and decaying contribution to the soils, bacteria, and fungi that add complexity to the ecosystem. We have been interfering with these aspects by reducing stocking, preventing disease, and removing large quantities of biomass. I am not opposed to reducing invasives, and I do cut diseased trees, but I also focus on maintaining the integrity of these processes to build resiliency in the future stands that I work in.

Currently these aspects of forest ecology are consistently overlooked, primarily to facilitate the use of mechanical harvest. There are no principles of forestry that support economy of scale harvesting. If machinery harvesters would adhere to these basic ecological principles their costs would skyrocket, and we could be able to compare the two operations more realistically.

This leads to another complication. The current avocation for forester is as agent for landowners to get the highest return on the growth of the trees on their land. The “science” that we were taught about managing forests focuses on trees, not on the ecosystem, so most foresters adhere to principles that enhance tree growth, not ecological integrity. The highest stumpage value for trees comes from timber sales that are ideally suited for economy of scale harvesting. Since ecology has already been given a back seat, then high stumpage and economy of scale are linked together as standards of modern forestry.

Also to make timber harvest more attractive to landowners foresters have developed a standard stumpage value, meaning that there is a convention to sell all trees of certain species for some regionally established value. This becomes the focus, and the harvesting systems that most effectively provide these values are then standardized. Again, there are no forestry principles that support this, just economic realities of the marketplace.

Adhering to ecological principles, using surgical harvesting to improve timber quality, and paying stumpage based on the cost of the work required to adhere to these processes are foundational to my approach to draft animal powered forestry.

Carl

[Carl Russell]

As far as whether natural ecological processes continue in a human-affected landscape, one merely needs to observe migratory songbirds feeding on the seeds of trees growing in vacant lots on Manhattan Island to realize that no matter how we change the components of our environs, we remain in the midst of a vast wilderness of mysterious coincidences as a consequence of strange interactions of processes inherent to this funny little rock floating in space.

Carl

[Carl Russell]

@Countymouse 38146 wrote:

……To get back to the origional point. I am not looking for an argument that draft animals have to be economically better. I think most landowners would appreciate that. I am looking for an argument that draft animals are better in some documentable, verifiable way. I feel that this factor is out there and would carry weight with many landowners, especially if they dont really need to money that a mechanical harvest of thier trees would bring.

Andy, I appreciate your desire to get a measurable outcome to your question. I am just trying to explain that this may be more of a qualitative evaluation. Since forestry is “applied” through harvest, if horses and machines are applied in the same way, then there should be no difference in the qualitative outcome.

The current norm for timber harvest, forestry in application, is based on many factors associated with the economy of scale possible with the use of machinery, for example marking high volume per acre, practicing even-aged management, and whole tree removal. If we use horses in a similar method we will be offering nothing better. Since there are no forestry principles that actually support economy of scale harvesting, I contend that given the limitations of horses to compete in that manner, then we should look qualitatively at how we can apply forestry in a way that favors the horse, and improves the effect of our choices as forest managers.

I regularly employ machinery loggers. I pay them nearly as much as I do the horse loggers who work for me. Access is the biggest factor. Compensating the horse logger to move logs long distances ensures that they will have enough income to do the work. The machines are better suited to moving logs long distances, but in the woods I find myself, while adhering to my primary objectives, marking wider skid trails, marking groups of trees to facilitate felling and hitching, and a variety of other compromises. The jobs are not comparable. The skidder operators I work with are good guys, but they are limited by their equipment as far as what they can accomplish for me, while the horse-loggers as a rule have much better results.

I recognize that we live in a landscape that is man-affected. I am not managing forests, I am managing my interaction with them. I don’t care for species composition. I don’t try to prevent disease complexes. I am not looking at the components of the forest, I am looking at the processes of the forest. Those processes are the forest. They exist in every successional stage of the forest, and in any species composition. I practice impact based on mimicking the natural, observable, processes that make the forest the forest.

While I appreciate your tendency toward quantitative review, there is an equally valid process of qualitative review that has been dismissed by the lovers of the mechanical mathematical methodology of science. Many more people have the ability to use qualitative evaluation then people who are trained in quantitative methods. There continue to be many instances where science is questioned on a daily basis on qualitative concerns, but since those values cannot be added to the formula, then they are dismissed.

I am taking the intent of the original search seriously. I do not believe that the answer is to compare horses to machines, the answer is to compare the way we apply the two different methodologies to the landscape. Ecological processes are hidden to most modern people, but given a chance to observe them, most people I have taken into the woods have quickly understood what is at stake. There is a part of our human organism, even in these modern times, that innately connects to the unseen value of nature.

Given the choice between having their woods worked in a way that protects that “feeling”, versus work that completely disrupts it, most people hands-down go with the horses. If I take the call from someone looking to make as much money as possible, they are not interested in taking that walk with me. I don’t work with them. If I take the owner into the woods and talk about all the money they can make, that is all they hear from me, and they dismiss any misgivings they may have about the “feelings” they have when they spend time in their woods.

But, let me spend some time with them validating those “feelings”, empowering them to find their own sense of value in the woods, to wrap themselves in the unseen blanket of natural processes going on around them, then there is no amount of money that can get a machine in those woods…..

Carl

[Carl Russell]

@Countymouse 38146 wrote:

…….

To get back to the origional point. I am not looking for an argument that draft animals have to be economically better. I think most landowners would appreciate that. I am looking for an argument that draft animals are better in some documentable, verifiable way. I feel that this factor is out there and would carry weight with many landowners, especially if they dont really need to money that a mechanical harvest of thier trees would bring.

I will be working with resource economists at UVM, not to prove that horses are better, but that the forestry practiced to support mechanized forestry is ecologically destructive. Then we can show that draft animals are better suited to putting into practice forestry based on ecological principles.

We won’t need to verify superiority, just clarify the difference in approaches, and let the work speak for itself.

Carl

[Carl Russell]

Andy, you just made my point perfectly. The reason that fire was suppressed was specifically to protect the timber. Following ecological principles would have easily outlined that naturally occurring phenomenon should be expected, and any actions to interfere to protect human economic interests would be contrary to the values provided by that ecosystem. The fact that USFS implemented those policies does not mean that there were not people who could see it was poor judgement. The fact that these policies couldn’t be changed without decades of study to determine what was clear to begin with, is exactly what I am saying.

USFS is a perfect example of perpetuation misconceptions about the forest. The USFS was founded purposefully as a way to convince the US public that public forestlands could be used to produce forest resources. They developed a scientific approach to managing the biological components of the forest to produce an agricultural-type crop of wood. The application of the science only considers those variables that are considered viable in economic terms. The science of how trees grow is at the basis for the policies that drive that approach, because trees are seen as the resource, and management is the manipulation of the forest.

An ecological approach would acknowledge that there are systems beyond comprehension at play in the forest, including massive phenomenon such as fires, floods, and hurricanes, but also many that are subtle and unseen as well. Manipulating any of those components, or effects, could have destructive effects on other parts, or the entire system. Rather than intensive management of the desired crop, an ecological approach would actually manage the manner of interaction……. making as little change in the current situation as possible. Surgical harvest is one way to manage your impact as opposed to managing the forest.

Trees growing in a field does not constitute a forest, and yet a forest does not exist without trees. To grow trees like an agricultural product, to be grown at the highest rate of return, and with the ultimate objective to be harvested, is to ignore the biological communities of interaction that make up the forest. The forest exists without definition, or measurement, but it can’t exist if the naturally occurring interactions are incomplete. Setting human oriented objectives on certain components of the forest, like uniform tree growth, that naturally would not occur homogeneously across the landscape without human intervention, is asking for ecological imbalance.

The habit of humans to assume that we can change our environment to suit our needs is archaic. It has served us well at times in the past. Now we need to recognize the inherent “wisdom” in natural systems without needing to measure every part to make sure. It means shedding the humanistic view of the Earth, and having more sensibility to the unseen, and the unknown, by leaving options open.

We are not looking beyond the obvious and easily observed. We are using science to measure what exists in the current context. Believing we have uncovered the most important details, we make assumptions based on those discoveries, and institute policies and methods that last for decades before a measurable defect is calculated, which drives us to investigate more deeply until we hit something that seems to be significant and can be backed up by science….. and we start all over again. We are working our way down into a hole with blinders on.

What is obvious and easily observed is that there is more to the natural forest than can be easily seen, or even understood. So being prudent in one’s approach would be the reasonable, responsible thing to do. Looking for scientific justification for intensive reordering of biological interacting components is an undeveloped rationale.

Carl

[Carl Russell]

@Mark Cowdrey 38136 wrote:

Carl,
I find an original 1975 edition and a later 1980 of Woodland Ecology. Do you know how they differ?
Thanks,
Mark
With a second look online I see a cover banner on the second edition mentioning a new section on “Fuelwood Forestry”.

I have the 1975 edition…….. and have never seen the updated version.

Carl

[Carl Russell]

Discussions of value routinely lead to questions about quantification and measurable parameters. The truth is that we can only measure what we know. What we know does not inform us materially about what we don’t know, nor does it inform us about how much we don’t know.

The ramifications of mismanaging ecological systems on Earth are serious. While some people are developing a science to quantify intangibles, the complexity of natural systems provides too many variables to adequately address before it is too late.

When we try to justify certain uses or interactions with ecosystems that contain economically important resources, such as wood, we automatically dismiss values that we cannot quantify. Observable ecological conditions like high stocking (density), natural mortality, decomposing coarse woody debris, irregular age-class distribution, and natural succession of species and stand composition are regularly overlooked in the interests of facilitating economy of scale harvesting.

The quantifiable value of these conditions is not required to recognize the fact that they are significant defining components of the natural forest ecosystem. Any work in the forest that dismisses these conditions as measurably insignificant is “missing the forest for the trees”. We cannot seriously consider forestry that does not manage our human impact on these ecological factors, economically feasible or not.

We are going to have impact. In some places, and in some conditions, we may have to accept significant impact to address urban or cultural needs. Across the landscape, though, we run the risk of destroying a vital resource.

We need to remember that Forestry was developed as a means to get landowners, and the public, to release their interest in their (our) forest asset. Finding ways to show value in cultivation has supported industrial growth, and has also provided economic opportunity for private landowners. What we have been doing is better than slash and burn, but it’s time to take it to another level and focus on the forest ecosystem as the resource, not the timber that comes out of it.

Carl

[Carl Russell]

Just to muddy the waters a bit more, the stumpage “value” paid for timber by mechanical operators does not really tell the whole “Value” picture.

Mechanical harvesters, and by default foresters administering mechanical timber sales, are squeezing the quality of workmanship between the market price of the logs and the stumpage paid. Economy of scale is the easy, but not completely accurate answer for why machines can operate for less than animals. In the effort to facilitate economy of scale harvesting, many ecological considerations are diminished in lieu of short term economics, and functionality.

Comparing animal powered harvesting to mechanical is apples to oranges. There is no way that horses can run over territory like that dragging that much volume. However, I still come back to the overwhelming cost of trying to use a skidder to mimic the scale and methods used by horse loggers.

All in all, the forest is about much more than growing timber on trees. Andy has the basic theory, but the intangibles that are added to this by protecting, restoring, and enhancing the natural ecological integrity of the biological community where those tree grow, more importantly the biological community that is built because those tree grow there, are what we are overlooking.

Using animals slows us down, limits our impact, and allows us to see and be a part of the forest ecosystem while we are harvesting and improving our woodlands. The end results may have real financial value to the landowners in terms of timber assets, but finding ways to practice forestry based on ecological principles is really going to have the greatest return for common good.

I agree that private landowners have personal objectives, and that is fine, but I think we need to be realistic. You can’t have it both ways. I don’t think we can just accept that some people are willing to make investments to protect ecological principles. If folks make a purely economical decision about timber management then they need to know that they are taking something that may not belong to them.

Here are a few paragraphs out of my favorite forestry book, Woodland Ecology, Environmental Forestry for the Small Owner, Leon S. Minckler, Syracuse University Press….

…..We must take action to save our Earth of life and beauty, and we must do it soon.
“Soon” is not quite too late. We can still save much of the beauty and usefulness of forests, wildlife, and waters so characteristic of this Earth. Judged by past experience, however, Man will wait until his back is against the wall. ……. The younger generations and all concerned people will have to make the choice and take the action. …….
But there are grave obstacles and pitfalls to overcome inherent in the very nature of Man. Loren Eiseley expressed it well in The Immense Journey:
“The need is not really for more brains, the need is now for a gentler, a more tolerant people than those who won for us against the ice, the tiger, and the bear. The hand that hefted the ax, out of some old blind allegiance to the past, fondles the machine gun as lovingly. It is a habit man will have to break to survive, but the roots go very deep”
We must understand that the old methods no longer work in this present world. If we fight for ever-increasing material abundance we will destroy our uniquely beautiful environment and, eventually, our species. The choice is ours. The goal is vital. With total dedication the attainment is barely possible…..

If workmanship based on ecological principles is not the foundation for forestry and timber harvest, then part of the income from mechanical conventional forest harvesting is derived from impacts on the forest ecosystem. We are accepting environmental loss to get financial gain.

Use draft animals and practice forestry based on ecological principles, and restoring biological integrity, while improving financial timber assets. They can’t do it with machines.

Carl

[Carl Russell]

George, I tend to use the stakes only to keep the logs from falling off. If the chains don’t hold the logs tight toward the middle of the bunk, then they can work out against the stakes, and it can be nearly impossible to get the stake out of the pocket.

I rearrange my chains a bit before I start to load.

I have had a scoot all cut out for a bout 2 years now, and I think with this wet weather I may try to finish it this week….

Carl

[Carl Russell]

@Does’ Leap 38103 wrote:

……. – all manageable, but sometimes annoying. George

Not as frustrating as logs sliding forward toward the animals, or backwards off the sled…..

When stretching the chain from outside to outside the binder is actually not putting as much pressure down on the logs as you want, as it is mostly lateral tension. I know many people who chain just as you suggest, but I found it not nearly as effective as chaining so that the longs are bunched together and tensioned down onto the bunk. I found that the added time for readjusting the load, or collecting logs that spilled, was more of a loss than developing a standard practice of wrapping the chain around the bunk.

What are you doing that seems to create difficulty? I Just keep the chain wrapped and taught by looping around the upright stakes, so that when I stop, I just open the binder and lay the chain ends open, roll on the logs, pull up the ends, and bind….

Carl

[Carl Russell]

It sure is interesting that as these small regional events move around we still pull people in from all over the northeast.

I had a great time too. It is good to engage with interested folks, but it is also an important opportunity to work, at least for a short while, with other animal power loggers from afar, with whom I would not likely get a chance any other way. And of course the many hours of good conversations….

Great job of organizing by Ed, Jean, Jen, and Bradley.

[Carl Russell]

Yes if you delete items to make room it will eliminate them from posts where you have uploaded pics etc….

The solution would be that the administrator increase upload file sizes. This would be especially important in consideration of the other discussion about the value of forum content.

Carl

[Carl Russell]

All packed… bringing forecart and bobsled…… and horses….. just have to do some chores in the AM and I should be out of here before noon……. try to get unloaded and do some prep work Friday afternoon….. See you then, Carl

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