TIMBER MANAGEMENT

WHAT IT IS:

Impartial, confidential, and comprehensive timber management for a healthy and resilient forest that works for you. Get guidance through the entire process, from the first overview of your property through to point of sale.

 

WHAT IT INCLUDES:

A full scope of traditional forest management services, including:

– Timber Harvesting
– Working Forest Management Outlines
– Timber Stand Improvement
– Cutting for wildlife habitat improvement
– Forest Road Layout & Design
– Timber Sale Administration
– Forest Inventory
– Tree Marking
– Stand Analysis & Delineation
– Diagnosis & Silvicultural Prescriptions

The service focuses on either keeping or simultaneously establishing healthy, functioning forest ecosystems, and actively avoids the practice of high-grading*. We take steps to ensure that that the forest isn’t simply stripped and left vulnerable to external pressures like climate change and invasive species. We maintain a focus on wildlife, diversity of plant species, plant communities, and water and air quality.

ADDITIONAL:

The service can also be easily tailored to individual and unique needs, such as:

– Making land more accessible for recreation
– Wildlife habitat
– Generating local wood products
– Creating forest viability
– Salvaging harvests from pests and storm damage
– Forest farming
– Creating forest viability

WHY WE CREATED IT:

CFA created this program for the majority of private Catskill landowners that don’t have easy access to proper timber management services – especially those with parcel acreages of approximately 100 or less. These parcel sizes are often overlooked by consulting foresters on account of limited economic feasibility.

Contact Patrick Dolan, CFA’s Education Forester, to get started with your Timber Management Plan.

(845) 586-3054 / patrick@catskillforest.org

*High-grading is the practice of cutting only the largest and most valuable trees, taking those best suited to the site and leaving behind an inadequate seed source for future forests. A similar analogy from livestock would be a farmer who shoots the blue ribbon bull, or the winning racehorse, and uses the ‘losers’ for breeding stock. The quality, then, of the herd – and the forest – declines rapidly.